


35mm

by tothemoon



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Era, Films, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Slow Build, Tokyo (City)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 11:17:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5705707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothemoon/pseuds/tothemoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A ten-year treatise on patience, brought to you by Akaashi Keiji.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [themorninglark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/gifts).



> hi all! this is my first bokuaka work...i've been watching a lot of old movies lately (like, really long ones), and i was struck with the idea to write a fic with the idea of "movie-watching" as the center for this fic. For reference, the Laputa Theater is a [real place](http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/10/06/catch-a-film-in-laputa-the-most-magical-theater-in-tokyo/) on the outskirts (?) of Tokyo, and I thought it'd be cool to feature a version of that for this work. Hope you enjoy! 
> 
> Also, gifted to the wonderful lark, because her wonderful akaken really inspired me to keep going with this fic. i hope you enjoy it, my friend ;____;

 

 

 

 

 

 

Akaashi Keiji is ten when he falls in love for the first time.

It’s summer, the terrible kind not worth knowing, and he’s got a volleyball in his bicycle basket, the most curious sweat on his nose, and a hankering for something cold to drink. When he comes up to the ticket booth at a theater with six-hundred yen (he had prepared accordingly for the villainy of overpriced snacks), he takes one look at the attendant, asks for a fountain drink _without_ the movie, and waits for the cold and corporate response of, _sure, what do I care?_ But the thing is, much to Akaashi’s chagrin, _she does care,_ she claims, most ardently, that _“_ this isn't just any place for blockbusters, kid.” Akaashi feigns the slightest bit of interest when she first mouths the name, Laputa theater _,_ and hands him a free pass to an afternoon showing of some movie he's never heard of before. 

“Sorry, I don't really like watching movies,” Akaashi apologizes. Especially old ones with grainy film and no color, judging by the posters on the bulletin board.

The attendant smiles, unfettered by Akaashi’s claims, and shows him through the door anyway. It's air conditioned in the lobby, and just by the right amount, and Akaashi can only wilt at the thought of heading back into the heatwave outside. When he sighs, relenting, he thinks it shouldn't be too much trouble to stay for half a movie (or maybe even less), and that he could always curl up to nap if he hated it. Thus, he lets the free pass come back into his open hand, the fountain drink in the other, and sees what he's getting himself into: it's 1954’s _Seven Samurai_ , four hours long, and well, _ancient_ by a ten year old’s terms.

Akaashi immediately regrets his decision.

He thanks the attendant anyway, ever courteous. Reading right through him, she opens the door to an empty theater, the beginnings of some long and tireless epic, and informs Akaashi of one thing: “have patience, and it'll pay off,”comes the advice, and he can only count it as wishful thinking. He sits down after that, volleyball at his side, and waits for boredom to take him at the opening credits. 

It doesn't, though. He is only left sprawling in something else, and warmth unfolds by the hands of _Seven Samurai._

Akaashi is ten when he falls in love for the first time, and lets himself be overcome by the irrepressible motion. When he stands outside the looming facade of the Laputa, now closed for the night, cool night air hitting a heated cheek, he thinks to become a loyal patron.

  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  


 

 

 

Akaashi’s first date to the Laputa theater occurs in the autumn season, when people start looking for the reprieve from the cold and excuses to cozy up. 

He does not yet know it's a date, and doesn't classify it as such until later, because he's only thirteen and not aware enough to know that he might like other boys; he just chalks it up a mutual like of samurai films, volleyball, and all the tiny _shared interests_ that usually comprise a first (and fleeting) crush. It's a good enough time at first, when Akaashi shows him the winding stairs and the projection room, all the little delicate rolls of film in their ancient tins; but he sees the way his date’s eyes roll over in boredom, hears the way he asks, “do they _only_ show old movies here?” and remembers that the Laputa isn't for everyone.

Hands unlink from there (he's not sure why they were held in the first place), and the spark is gone as soon as it had come. 

Still, because his mother has taught him the importance of understanding the differences in people, _because you're like water, Keiji, and you'll flow with the best of them,_ he takes no offense to his friend’s nonchalance. Akaashi suggests the arcade instead, has himself a decent time, and stays acquaintances with him afterward.

  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  


 

 

 

 

Their friendship fades rather naturally a year after that, as they tend to do at his age, and Akaashi contemplates life’s oddities with a late night foray, solo, to the Laputa theater. It's a Monday, “a particularly slow one,” the attendant tells him at the ticket booth, and Akaashi thinks he might be lucky enough to see the featured matinee alone. They're showing _Seven Samurai_ again, one of Akaashi’s favorites by now, and he'd be glad to watch it for (what feels like) the millionth time in this short, but decent life. 

“Need a second ticket today, Keiji-kun?” the attendant asks, quite familiar with Akaashi by now. On special occasions, he even calls her _onee-san,_ but this time, he just shakes his head _no_. Some nights were meant to be spent alone.

When Akaashi pops into the back of the theater, volleyball in tow and previous movie rolling it's credits, he scans the empty rows until he finds his favorite spot: he's long determined that it's the very middle seat of the middle-most row, _perfect,_ and that it should be taken when every chance arises. Shoulders slump when he realizes someone's already beat him to it, but he doesn't blame them, and settles for the row right behind him. Akaashi just hopes he’ll only be here until the end of the credits, and that he'll have his chance to take the seat, then.

It doesn't take him long to realize that the other moviegoer is crying. Quite audibly, in fact _._  

_Great._

Akaashi usually doesn't like to eavesdrop, because it usually means hearing things, surely the most troublesome things, and he'd prefer to have peace in his life, but he can't help it since they're the only two people in the theater. When Akaashi leans forward in his seat, handkerchief offered and waved out of courtesy, he accidentally lets the volleyball slip from his lap. It hits the ground in a soft _thud,_ which gets the other boy’s attention more than anything else, like the sound of it is _instinct_.

He doesn't turn around. “You play volleyball, too?” he asks instead, still choked up. His voice is on the husky side, scratchy, but young, and Akaashi determines they are around the same age.

“Ah, yes,” Akaashi tells him, wondering how he could tell from the sound so easily. “I'm a setter.”

The stranger reaches over his shoulder to take the handkerchief still in Akaashi’s hand. He blows his nose loudly, insists the air is _much_ too dry in here to properly live, and that anyone would cry from it. “Do you play, too?” Akaashi asks him right back, just to make conversation until _Seven Samurai_ starts, and he gets a shake of a head as a response.

“No.”

“Oh,” answers Akaashi.

“I quit.”

“I see.” What a shame. “When did you quit?”

“An hour ago.”

“Oh,” Akaashi just remarks again, not really knowing what else to say. In his head, he lays out the options in an attempt at crafting the appropriate response. He could **A)** ask _why_ he quit, because some people were prone to vent, _needed_ to vent to feel better, and it wouldn't be too much trouble for Akaashi to nod his head in the smallest sympathy, or **B)** not say anything at all about the matter, because some people liked to be left alone to stew and _think_ and make sense of it all without the prying. (He quite liked this option.) With a sigh, Akaashi realizes he doesn't know the answer, because a lot of kids played and quit and cried over volleyball on a daily basis, and it'd be hard to guess either way; so he just sits back, leans his head over the backboard cushion of his seat, and decides on a whim.

(Akaashi aptly calls it _living on the edge._ )

“Why you'd quit?” he asks up to the ceiling, and he hopes he hasn't made a giant mistake.

“I was off my game today and the coach benched me. It was my first time getting to be in the starting rotation, and my chance to really do my best, and I blew it! I might as well just quit forever!”

“I see.” That's happened a couple of times to Akaashi before, _getting benched_ , and he certainly understands how jarring it can be. Still, he would hardly call that the end of the world, with all the _pestilence and warfare_ he’s heard about in the news, so he writes it off as a practice in dramatics _._  

Expecting as such, Akaashi peers back up to the front, only to see a head still down, wonders if this more serious than he thought, and breaks out the bigger guns in his arsenal.

“Ah, well...there's always next time,” he says, and he feels a cringe form across his face when over how unconvincing his encouragements ring. _Certainly a misfire_ , he guesses, because he's always been sort of terrible at offering any sort of consolation, but _maybe_ it’ll do the trick anyway and—

“There won't be a _next time_! I'm done for!”

_Ah. Nope._ Akaashi suspects this will be more difficult than he's suspected. Part of him is tempted to leave altogether, because he's still got homework and tosses to practice against the wall, and it's not like Akaashi _knows_ him anyway. 

But like a sign, he watches the screen come back to life in glorious black and white, faded but ready to play. Bandits raid the opening scene of _Seven Samurai_ , just like they'd done when Akaashi first watched this movie four years ago, and he wonders, briefly, if the other boy will stay the entire runtime. Akaashi is even tempted to tell him yes, _you should stay_ , _and you should stay with volleyball even if you've had a bad day,_ but he knows it would be out of place.

“Hey.”

Instead, Akaashi presses himself up against the back of the seat right next to _the perfect one_ , and warns, rather bluntly, that the movie is four hours long. He even goes on about the lack of color, and the scratchy sound natural of a movie from 1954, and that sometimes, just sometimes, _it's hard to keep up with_ —but in due time, by the end, he might just have himself a brand new favorite.

“So give it time,” Akaashi says simply, picking up his duffle bag, his cherry soda, and the volleyball off the ground. He leaves without looking back, but he hears the other boy climb up on his seat, squeaky leather abound.

“What about your handkerchief?” he asks, and Akaashi waves over his shoulder. In passing, he muses that the shadow looks like he's got a white flag raised, ready to surrender.

“Please keep it,” Akaashi tells him with the lightest nod of his head, because he really couldn't care less about something like a _handkerchief (_ and he really ought to start paying attention to the movie, anyway). “Just put it away, if you don't need to use it.”

With this, Akaashi leaves without another word, content enough to chat with his favorite attendant at the booth and the fifteen minute train ride back home. He carries on with his night as usual, pretending to care about cram school work and practicing his tosses like he said he would, and thinks no more of the boy in the Laputa theater.

  


 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

  


 

 

 

Three months later, right on the edge of spring, Akaashi gets the news from a phone call to his house and a very elated mother.

“Fukurodani High School just called, Keiji. They want you on their volleyball team. Can you believe it?”

Akaashi lets the rice slip out from between his chopsticks, sets his dinner down altogether, and pinches himself under the table. When he realizes none of this is a dream, that he's going to play volleyball at an actual powerhouse school, he offers his mother the smallest smile, trying not to gape, and shakes his head in disbelief.

“Hardly,” he says back to her, and she laughs. He plays it off like he's not particularly thrilled, but there's no hiding it, because _he is,_ and she can only set herself down to muss up his hair in the usual way she does. Akaashi briefly wonders if this is why he's got perpetual bedhead, but he'll let it pass this time. He just lets another grin sneak through, right back down at his rice bowl, and a single mother sighs at her only son.

“You're always so calm about these things, Keiji,” she tells him. “The team will be so lucky to have you.”

  


 

 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  


 

 

 

 

 

It's raining on the day before Akaashi’s first practice at Fukurodani.

“Damn it.”

He's not sure how he's ended up here, right at the doorstep of the gym he'll be calling home for the next three years, off his usual running path and in trainers too wet to run back home in. Akaashi thinks this is what he gets for being proactive about keeping in shape, for playing the part of backup setter for a powerhouse school, and he wonders if maybe, _just maybe_ , he should to remember to exhale. _In for a penny, in for a pound,_ he reminds himself. Let it unfold. 

Akaashi takes another deep breath, remembers that the subconscious has a habit of leading you to places you'd never think to go on your own, and settles himself down to please it, anyway. _Hello,_ Fukurodani. Akaashi peers at the stray weeds and the chipped paint of the walls, imprints the sight of them until they might seem familiar, but knows that will take time. Getting used to Fukurodani, a new school, a new team, will take time.

In the meanwhile, Akaashi thinks he might be content to just sit around until the storm lightens up. He flips off his shoes, peels off his wet socks, and leans back on top of the first step to gym, eyes shut and world away. He wonders what the Laputa’s playing this week, or if his mother’s making nanohana with mustard for dinner later. After a supreme bout of peace, he even thinks he hears the sound of sneakers squeaking— _what a good and honest sound,_ Akaashi thinks _—_ and congratulates himself for drifting off into this near nirvana.

(But never do they last.)

This particular one ends by the outburst of a swinging door, and Akaashi nearly falls over from the fright. He bolts up, turning and back in the rain, and comes face to face with the sight of him.

“I thought I heard someone outside,” he remarks, keen, and Akaashi scowls, deep.

“You... _heard_ me?”

“You know, like the _shifting._ Like, when it's the middle of the night and you've invited a friend over, and you can hear them toss around under the covers of their futon. _Scritch, scritch, scritch_. Because, you know, city nights are never quiet nights.”

“I don't understand,” Akaashi tells him, but somehow, he does. He peers back to his thrown-off trainers, remembers that he's barefoot in front of an upperclassman, and thinks he might as well be naked. At his indiscretions, the other boy laughs, and Akaashi bows, deep, apologetic, and ready to disappear. 

“I'm sorry, Bokuto-san,” he says, and _Bokuto_ raises an eyebrow before settling.

“You know my name?”

Akaashi nods, head down. “You're very well known in volleyball circles, Bokuto-san, it's not everyday you meet someone in the national ace’s top ten.” When he peers up, Bokuto makes a strange mix of a _tch_ and a hiss, and Akaashi thinks he's offended him horribly. He keeps in his bow from there, not sure how to proceed with the likes of _Bokuto Koutarou_ , and waits for his reprimand.

“Top ten!” Bokuto shouts out, and his voice echoes across the courtyard. “Top teeeeeeen! I can do better than that! If only I could master that bastard straight spike of mine!”

_Bastard straight spike._ Akaashi’s never heard a mix of those words before.

He opens his mouth to say something when Bokuto beats him to it; pressing his hands on Akaashi’s shoulders, Bokuto brings him back upright like a wind up doll and leans in close. _Too close_. Akaashi can smell chocolate protein powder on Bokuto’s breath. (Akaashi is more apt to have vanilla.)

“Say, Akaashi!”

“You...know my name?” it's Akaashi turn to ask.

Bokuto nods, still unaware of the term _personal space_. “Why wouldn't I? I'd be a bad captain if I didn't know the people joining! And better yet, you're a setter, aren't you?”

Akaashi nods. “Ah, yes, but I'm not sure if I—”

“Nonsense!”

Akaashi is tempted to say, _well, no, you're the one who's made of nonsense._ But he doesn't, because that's rude, and he keeps his mouth shut. When Bokuto lifts himself away from their closeness, Akaashi braces himself, feels Bokuto grip a hand in his like he wants to shake it, and smiles wide.

Bokuto stares back down at Akaashi’s bare feet. “Whether or not you've got your shoes on, or whether it's sunny or raining, I believe in the tosses you'll give me!” he says, struggling with his words along the way, like he had meant to come up with Japan’s next great proverb. Akaashi gets it though, somehow, even if he's already _exhausted_ , _because Bokuto Koutarou is exhausting,_ and feels himself swell in something like firm belief.

“Hey, _Akaashi_. Can I call you that?”

“Sure.”

Bokuto smiles again, wide and uncontained. Akaashi suddenly feels like he's known him for many, many years.

“So, what do you say?” Bokuto asks. “Will you help me get into that top three?”

Akaashi considers the possibilities.

 

**A)** Leave.

**B)** Stay for the meanwhile.

**C)** Stay for the next hour.

**D)** Stay and take your time.

 

Deep comes his exhale. Akaashi shakes Bokuto's hand and keeps it there for a little longer than he'd like.

“Let's begin, Bokuto-san.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


* * *

 

  
  
  
  
  
  


When Akaashi shows up to the Laputa theater in his new Fukurodani tracksuit two months later, his favorite attendant perks up from her wedding catalogues, hands him his usual _admit one_ ticket, and continues to gawk.

“Keiji-kun, you look so—”

“Don't say it, onee-san.”

“You look so handsome!”

Akaashi merely accepts the compliment with a small shrug, chin buried into a high-zipped collar. It's still a bit chilly given the usual springs he's used to in Tokyo, but he doesn't complain about it. The attendant does though, asking Akaashi if they'd prefer to talk inside, and puts up the usual _be back in five minutes_ sign on their way into the theater.

_“So…”_ She asks about all the usual things, like how he's enjoying his first year of high school so far, if he's made any friends, and if he's been getting a ton of homework. Akaashi nods along, answering, _a decent amount,_ to all of her questions, and lets her lead him up the winding stairs. She takes one look at the duffle bag and the tracksuit again, feigning a frown, and sighs when they reach the very top.

“Now what was the sport you play again? The one that's been costing this grand old theater at least _half_ their profits every month?”

Akaashi frowns. “I don't come here that often.”

“Oh, you'd be surprised. But seriously!”

“Volleyball,” Akaashi answers.

“Do you like it?”

Akaashi is tempted to drone on with the same answer again, _a decent amount,_ but stops himself when he knows it's more than just that. He thinks of the time spent tailoring his tosses to the teammates he's still getting used to, the dumps he's learned to add to a repertoire he'd still like to expand, the trips to Nekoma and Shinzen for the liveliest of practice matches, _actual matches_ —remembers, again, that not everyone will care about the specifics—and shrugs. “It's good,” he says, and feels the back of his neck break out into something red.

“Good?” the attendant asks. “That's way more than I usually get out of you.”

It is then when Akaashi thinks about Bokuto Koutarou, their extra Sunday practices, and all their time spent getting that _bastard straight spike_ to be, well, less of a _bastard_. They'd been successful about thirty percent of the time with it by now, judging by all of Bokuto’s wild exclamations across the gym, all his “I'm gonna conquer the world’s” and every happy guttural in between.

The other seventy percent—all their failures—had ranged from _just_ off the mark to _terrible_ misses, but Bokuto had lamented the end of the world for every single one. By now, with every hurtle into the deepest depths of his _dejected modes_ , Akaashi’s even learned how to say, “please take this time to calm down, Bokuto-san,” served with the cushion of chilled chocolate milk boxes and five minute breaks. 

(Akaashi thinks might do away with the breaks soon, though. The chocolate milk, too. Patience is key with Bokuto, not _pampering_ him.)

_Well,_ whatever their success rate is at this point, Akaashi forces himself to shake the thoughts of him away for the meanwhile. With two-hundred yen out, he asks for his usual fountain drink, a large cherry cola, and takes the first sip from the straw like a drag, blatantly indulgent (and a _travesty_ , nutritionally, but he doesn't care). The attendant just leans over concessions with a big smile, a quiet gloat of a chuckle, and Akaashi just frowns.

“Is there something on my face?” he asks.

“Oh, no,” she says. “I was just thinking that you've got a lot on your hands, don't you?”

Akaashi takes another sip instead of a sigh, gulps down, and finds the most diplomatic way to answer. He bows, light in the usually way he does with her, and points towards the door. He hears the beginnings of 1949’s _Late Spring,_ remembers the season is not yet over, and knows what to say.

“Ah, well. The movie’s just getting started,” Akaashi says, hopefully not too cheeky, but it really just has.

In the back of his head, Bokuto Koutarou looms again, that focal point in a sea of negative space. Faraway, Akaashi watches the wilderness grow around him, proud and uncontained, but lets him stay.

  
  
  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  


 

 

 

(But he also thinks, defiantly, ‘ _well_ , _I'm not going to give him chocolate milk tomorrow.’_ )

  
  
  


 

 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“How do you do it, Akaashi-kun?” 

“What do you mean, Konoha-san?” 

“Well, you never seem to lose your cool with him.” 

Akaashi peeks over past the net to find Bokuto spinning a ball on his finger, smiles bright for his side of their practice squad and much too excited about a lap of flying balls. An assistant coach scolds him when he fails to do a set with a his team, to which Bokuto apologizes and throws himself upon the mercy of hardwood. While they're finishing up with that, Akaashi works on his receives on the other side (his least favorite drill), distracted enough to miss one from his coach on the ladder, and he apologizes profusely for any mishaps.

“Hey, _head in the game_ , Akaashi!” the coach calls after him. “We need all our setters focused for inter high!”

Akaashi bows again and Konoha just pats him on the back, all sympathetic. They jolt up when they hear the coach yell to the principal setter on the other side, a war-weary third year about to enter his last tournament. To him and Bokuto, the coach says they need to stop focusing on that “garbage straight spike, because it'll never be usable in matches!” and the third year setter can only nod in agreement. Akaashi stops everything he's doing.

“Tell Bokuto stop _insisting_ upon it, then!”

“I'm only doing that because I know it'll work!” Bokuto yells back.

“But you heard the coach! Why don't you just give it up already?”

Akaashi raises a stiff hand and walks himself up to the net, where Komi and Konoha quietly cheer for him on the side with small fist bumps along the way. “Coach,” he calls to him, and everyone looks to the first year setter in spectacle.

“May I?” Akaashi asks in the other setter’s direction. There are no objections. Bokuto’s gaze widens, a bird of prey, and he takes that as a sign to start.

Akaashi picks a volleyball off from the ground, presents it to all parties involved as a peace offering, and silently throws it over for Washio to toss to him. Bokuto gets the signal, jumps up by the time Akaashi’s already got the ball in the air, and exhales when he thinks he's got it in the right spot. _He's going to get it,_ Akaashi thinks, and when Bokuto does, he hits it down with the utmost fury, taking out the middle blockers on the other side. He even goes to high five Akaashi on the way down, but it's a blur from there—Akaashi getting grabbed by a handful of his pinafore, the names like _asshole upstart know-it-all_ —before Bokuto takes the liberty of coming in between the two of them.

Shaken, Akaashi barely has the time to compose himself when the other setter says it: “if you think you can do it, go ahead. See if I care.”

“I...I really meant no disrespect,” Akaashi fumbles for once, “it's just that I think Bokuto-san really _can_ do it and—” he bites his tongue when he knows he's said too much, past the point of polite language. It tastes like conviction.

(Akaashi sours, when it reminds him of blood on a busted lip.)

“ _Whatever_.”

“What?” Bokuto pipes up.

“I’m resigning anyway,” says the only third year left on the team, enough to shut the coach up. “I can't do this anymore, and I've really got college to think about. I'm going.”

“Inter high is a _week_!”

“The team will be fine, captain.” The third year swallows a pause, eyes on Akaashi. “You know this.”

Akaashi feels himself wilt before rising. Bokuto steps forward.

“Are you sure about this?”

Once again, there are no objections. 

Glances dance amongst the three involved: setter to setter, setter to captain, captain to setter. Akaashi to Bokuto. It is an unspoken changing of the guards, old to the new (even if Akaashi suspects he's only quitting completely in the heat of the moment). He feels his hands clam up when even the coach nods in their direction, because even he might agree, and Akaashi can only allow himself the deepest bow. As tempted as he is to refuse things, to say, _let me remain your backup setter,_ he knows the sweat on his palms isn't from wanting to stay on the bench.

So Akaashi doesn't say it. _Let me remain your backup setter_.

Because he doesn't want to be a _backup setter._  

He never wanted to stay _the backup setter._  

“I thank you for this opportunity,” he tells everyone instead, a signal in the only sort of selfishness he’ll allow of himself today, maybe ever, and no one dares to refute it.

  
  
  
  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  
  


 

 

When Akaashi shows up to school three days after the incident, he finds a folded note underneath his indoor shoes, name messily scrawled (and spelled with the wrong characters), and reads to himself with little urgency.

 

**_practice is canceled today after school!!_ **

**_do not be alarmed!!_ **

**_HOOT HOOT HANGOUT EXTRAVAGANZA (part three)_ **

 

“How vague.”

Still, Akaashi does what he's told, wonders if the gym’s being worked on or if another sports team needs it this afternoon, and goes about his day. It is a slow crawl of a morning until lunchtime, one that Akaashi usually takes with no problem, but he's been more restless lately than not; and while certain people—certain team captains—prefer the audible groan, or the wild fidget, or god forbid, the _whine,_ Akaashi’s always hated the stilted brand of his own antsiness. A fever rises again. Hands clam up. He wonders if he is dying. 

Komi, the second year libero, taps him on the head after, and brings Akaashi back into reality.

“Hey, Akaashi, what's up with you?” he asks. “Your stomach upset you? That's why I don't mess those convenience store boxes you know, too high in sodium, makes you all sluggish,” he prattles on, and Konoha just clicks his tongue. 

“Can't you see?” Konoha butts in. “Akaashi-kun’s tired as all hell. Look at the circles under his eyes!”

Akaashi just drops his chopsticks, presses his fingers over his cheeks, and shakes his head—but they aren't wrong. He really hasn't been sleeping in between the late night practices and the heaps of homework, but in all modesty Akaashi just tells them _it’s part of being a setter—_ because it's true, for better or worse, and goes back to mapping strategies for their offense.

“Ah, well, we've all been working hard,” Komi sighs out. “I recently saw a tournament match in Miyagi, and saw the most _amazing_ libero I've ever seen in my life from this no-name team. Torino, I think they’re called? He was a first year, too! Makes you wanna work twice as hard.”

Akaashi closes his eyes, leaning his cheek over the cup of his palm. “Well, we'll beat them if that time ever comes,” he drones out without meaning to. Komi and Konoha laugh, and Akaashi immediately shuts his mouth closed.

“ _Oh ho ho_ , how forward of you, Akaashi-kun,” Konoha remarks, mocking of a certain team captain. “You really have been working too hard if _Bokuto’s_ rubbing off on you.” 

“Good thing one of our team gatherings is today. It should be fun, and you need the break,” says Komi, getting up to wrangle an arm around Akaashi’s neck and muss up his hair. “This magic spell will be lifted off you soon! We will have our Akaashi-kun back to normal!” 

“Normal?” Akaashi releases himself. 

“Oh, you know, the usual _Akaashi-_ look.”

Komi goes all heavy-lidded, eyelashes fluttering, and Akaashi is tempted to say, _‘I certainly don't look like that,’_ but he's too busy wondering about the meaning of _back to normal_ to make any rebuttals. Komi stays with his impressions—the nonchalant, the nonplussed—and Akaashi doesn't blame him, or anyone, for thinking he might be caring about this more than usual. Because _like water,_ his mother once told him, _you will always look cool to the touch_. Akaashi’s tempted to tell them that this _is_ the way he gets before games, regardless of what's written on his face, and wishes they could feel his simmer. 

_It's a fever you can't shake_ , he wants to say, but lets the chance pass him by. One Bokuto Koutarou crosses his mind instead, wayward but not unwelcome, and Akaashi swallows down, gritting his teeth before releasing.

“So,” he asks, mostly to change the subject, “why are we having this get-together? I already told my mother I'd be home for dinner tonight.” She was going to prepare his favorite too, nanohana with mustard, and Akaashi was never one to miss those sort of evenings.

Konoha and Komi exchange glances, peering around their classroom to make sure no one can hear. Akaashi slumps back in his seat.

“A team tradition since _1871—_ ” 

“You're making that up,” Komi interrupts.

“Okay, fine. A team tradition since _2011,_ the Fukurodani volleyball team has always embarked a few team gatherings before tournament season. It's been called many a name over the years, like _‘Amaratesu aid us!’_ or _‘VB-free streak,’_ but the goal is always the same: for a day, with tournaments on the horizon, we take a break for one whole evening. No volleyball whatsoever.”

Akaashi perks up at this. “Really? And who even plans this every year?”

Glances shift again, like this one outing might be for the record books, and Akaashi already knows the answer.

“Well, it's always up to that year’s team captain.”

  


 

 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  
  


 

 

Akaashi knows, instantly, to kiss that _nanohana_ goodbye.

  
  
  
  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  


Bokuto calls it _last man standing._  

“We're going to sit here and watch horror movies until we drop,” he says, disciplined with balled fists over his lap, eyes already glued to the DVD menu screen for _Ju-on_. “Last man standing gets himself two free passes for the movies and all my respect.”

Konoha leans against the doorway of the club room. “And why aren't we actually _going_ anywhere this year? We got to do karaoke last time.”

“Coach says we needed the funding for new equipment this year! So I had to improvise!”

“I wouldn't call horror movies an _ideal_ for stress management." 

“Sure it is!” Bokuto insists. “You'll get so stressed during these movies that you won't feel it any more for the tournament. It'll be like sweating it out in a sauna.”

“Gross.”

Akaashi scowls deep, wondering where their captain got that sort of logic this time, but settles his bag down nonetheless. He can always use the extra movie passes—even if it probably isn't for the Laputa—and he's never been one to scare easily during horror movies anyway. Bokuto claps when Akaashi takes a seat next to him, and the rest of the team groans and does the same.

It doesn't take long for a few of them to bow out. The team manager, Yukie, leaves on the pretense of _mere boredom_ (and Akaashi believes it, because she's probably the toughest person on the team). Washio and Sarukui say goodbye to the free movie passes when they get to the first jump scare in _Ju-On,_ with claims that games like this were too sadistic to play. Komi, poor Komi, actually lasts until the very end of the first movie, but barely makes it fifteen minutes into a showing of _Audition_ before hightailing it out of the club room altogether; he insists that his mother is calling him for dinner (“oh, I can already hear her calling from down the street, actually, so I guess it's time for me to go!”) and leaves without so much as another word. 

“Scared yet, Akaashi-kun?” Konoha asks, though he's probably the one that's gone ten shades paler than any ghost they've seen in _Ju-On_. 

Akaashi just peers over at Konoha with somewhat of a devious grin, unspoken code for, _I'm gunning for the prize_. He flits his sights to Bokuto (who’s absolutely _shaking_ by now), then back to the screen, still not in the least bit perturbed.

“You demon.” Konoha slumps back in utter defeat; he and a few other bench players get up after that, content to find stress management in the form of ice cream bars and other convenience store fare.

“Bokuto-san.” 

Only two remain.

“Y-yeah, Akaashi?”

“I mean no disrespect, but do you need to forfeit?” 

“N-never!”

Before Akaashi knows it, the DVD ends and Bokuto looks wearily to the next one. He reaches over to the remote, still caught in his kneel, and keeps his whole body bowed in surrender.

“Well, time for the next one!” Bokuto proclaims, his laughs nervous, to the floor. “Be brave, Akaashi!”

“But Bokuto-san, you're the one sweating.”

“A-am not!”

Akaashi gets up to eject _Audition_ out from the media player. The next movie, Nakata Hideo’s _Ringu,_ pops in with a click, and Bokuto winces at the sound of the movie, already mid-scene. _You will die in seven days._ Bokuto’s eyes pop open like he might die in the next five seconds.

“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi calls again, pausing to go back in the main menu. It stops on the close-up of a gaping ghost.

“Can’t you see I’m trying to watch the movie, Akaashi?” Bokuto scolds, but he’s only got eyes on his kouhai. They’ve gone as wide as two moons, watery by the television light, and Akaashi knows immediately what to do. 

Finger to the power button, he ends the competition altogether and declares Bokuto the unanimous winner. Last man standing. Bokuto stays on his knees. 

“Are you scared of horror movies, Bokuto-san?” Akaashi asks, graceful upon the loss. 

Bokuto shrugs. “Maybe.”

Akaashi shrugs and sits back down, legs crossed, in front of his captain. He’s delicate in putting the disks back into their right boxes. “My mother refuses to watch them, because she gets the worst nightmares,” he tells Bokuto. “They last a couple of days, and she gets dark circles under her eyes.” 

“What are you trying to say?” Bokuto asks. 

“Well,” Akaashi remarks, sealing the boxes clean and stacked. “Maybe Konoha-san was right. I don’t think these movies are good for stress management.”

“Well, _you_ seem calm.”

“Ah, well. I just happen to like movies.”

Sitting up only to collapse onto his back, Bokuto smacks his palms against his cheeks and lets them settle over his eyes. Silence meanders into the room, thick but not uncomfortable, and Akaashi stays where he is. 

“I can’t settle down, Akaashi,” Bokuto tells him. “No matter what I try, I feel like I got a thousand ants running over me all the time.” This is the first time Akaashi is hearing this, but he is not surprised. “Like I gotta keep moving, or else I’ll go into a coma. I just want to play already. I want to hear the crowds and the way those volleyball carts squeak by you! There’s nothing else like it.”

Akaashi understands— _oh_ _god, does he_ —but he also knows a captain is no use when he’s lying flat on the ground. Getting up to brush the dust off his knees, he makes his way over to Bokuto, presumptuous enough to stand over him, and offers both hands, open as can be. He lets his gaze skimper away, because such closeness was never in the playbooks when it came to spending time with an upperclassman, _a rising star_ , and he wonders if he’s made himself too keen this time around. Exhale. _Prepare for the reprimand._  

What Akaashi gets instead is a grip taken.

Bokuto pulls on him, maybe a little too hard, too eager, and accidentally sends him flying to the ground, too. _Shit. Ow._ Akaashi is sure he’s punctured Bokuto’s spleen (or at least kneaded him in the ribs), and feels the daze of two knocked skulls on the way to the floor.

“S-sorry,” he says, but Bokuto just laughs. Akaashi rolls over, right off of him, and stays down at a comfortable distance. He begins to wonder if he should’ve gone to Nekoma instead.

“Hey, Akaashi!” Bokuto shouts out of nowhere. 

Akaashi tilts his head to face him. “Yes, Bokuto-san?” he asks. 

“I actually think this is kinda nice.” Bokuto smiles up at the ceiling. “Lying here like this. I feel calmer already.”

“Ah.” Akaashi thinks he might sneeze from the dust bunnies on the ground. “Well, that’s good to hear.”

Another beat of silence comes. Bokuto welcomes a sigh to push through it.

“Hey, Akaashi,” he calls again.

“Yes, Bokuto-san?”

“You mind if we just stay like this a little?” asks Bokuto. “Sometimes the quiet’s just fine.” 

Akaashi can’t help but agree, and nods to his requests. “Whatever you please, _last man standing,”_ he even yawns, cupped behind his hand, and finds himself a victim of his own fatigue. Maybe he really has been working too hard; Akaashi feels it curl in his toes and scrunch up his calves, burn on scraped knees and tense by bandaged fingers.

“Hey, Akaashi.”

“Yes, Bokuto-san?” 

“You know, this is the first time I’ve learned anything about you,” Bokuto says. “So...movies, huh?”

Akaashi nods, half asleep. “I like watching them.”

Bokuto hums. “Sometimes, I don’t have the will to sit through movies. They’re either too long, or too intense, and I have to bow out before I get to the end. I get spoiled a lot because I never make it to the credits, and I'm just _dying_ to know what happens.” 

“Is that so?” _Not a surprise._ Eyes close. Breathing finds a reasonable pattern to settle in, and speech comes, less guarded. “It’s just finding the right amount of patience, Bokuto-san. It gets better,” he tells him, drunk off drowsiness. Akaashi already feels himself one foot into a dream. He doesn’t mind if Bokuto comes along, too.

“Hm? Well, maybe you have to show me, then. What’s your favorite movie?” 

Akaashi doesn’t have to think about that one. “ _Seven Samurai._ ” 

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Me, too!” 

“I think that’s the first time I’ve learned anything about _you,_ Bokuto-san.”

Another one of his laughs ring through the air, and nothing more is said. The air keeps cool for the night, the lights stay off, and the two of them drift off into sleep with the dusk. Neither one of them wake up from nightmares, or the itch to run onto the court, and Akaashi settles for the slight twitch of tossless fingers.

  
  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  


 

 

When Akaashi wakes up, it’s night and Bokuto is still asleep. His breathing is hearty and on the verge of a snore, but not quite so, and Akaashi watches the way his face furrows in a frown before settling. Akaashi breathes a sigh of relief over the calm, sits up, and notices the gap between them. It’s definitely grown smaller, he thinks, before putting the thought away altogether; he knows he should not be counting the centimeters in the first place.

Akaashi wipes the sleep away from his eyes with the jacket still over him. He notices how it smells like spearmint deodorant. Lemons, too. How it’s been worn much too thin and just a tad too big. How it’s _definitely_ not his, because it has to be—

_Ah_.

—his jacket.

Bokuto’s jacket.

Akaashi feels the back of his neck redden, because senpais should not be giving underclassmen their jackets to wear, and he shouldn’t be in the proximity to know what Bokuto’s _deodorant_ smells like. Still, he finds the oddest disrespect in just folding and giving it back too, because Bokuto _had_ taken the great effort of laying it upon him.

“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi resolves instead, keeping the jacket on him. “Bokuto-san,” comes the call, until Bokuto shakes awake and alert. He is certainly not the type to straggle in his post-sleep, jolting upright and ready to go. Akaashi leans back, startled, and Bokuto smiles at him.

_Too bright_ , Akaashi thinks. _Like a new day in the night_.

“You passed out, Akaashi! I’ve never seen anyone fall asleep so fast!”

Akaashi frowns. “Speak for yourself, Bokuto-san.”

Bokuto lowers his shoulders, squaring himself up for the peace of things. “Anyway! Enough about that. What was I saying when you dozed off?” 

“Um,” Akaashi sighs out. “Oh. Movies.”

“Oh, yeah! Movies!” Bokuto pounds a fist into his palm when he remembers. “We should all have a movie night next time, I think, one without the horror kind. That might be nice.” 

Akaashi nods. “Okay.”

“Wait. _Shit_!”

When Bokuto soon realizes the time, the darkness outside, he gasps, curses to himself, and swears he didn’t mean to stay this long. “My family’s having yakiniku tonight. I can’t miss that!” He gathers his things—everything sans the jacket—and rushes to the doorway. Still caught in a blur, Akaashi just waves, sure he’ll lose him, and Bokuto stops himself short before dashing off.

Akaashi reaches out with the jacket in hand. “Bokuto-san, your—”

“Hey, Akaashi!” Bokuto smiles wide and Akaashi stops himself with the mash of his lips. “Thanks for helping me through this whole stress thing! I think I really needed that.”

“But I didn’t—” 

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, all right?” Bokuto says, swinging himself out the side. The grin comes like a flash, but Akaashi catches it like old film caught in its projector. Against the moon, Bokuto rules it, like he could rob all the light and get away with it, and Akaashi remembers it’s not polite to stare.

Bokuto, in turn, says nothing about the jacket. He leaves, ever on his feet, and Akaashi finds two passes to the Laputa theater in one of the pockets.

  
  
  
  


 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  
  


 

The Laputa announces a romance week for the summer, set to play western classics like _Casablanca, Roman Holiday,_ and _It Happened One Night._ The attendant tells Akaashi it’s in honor of her upcoming engagement (because it's bound to happen _any day_ now), and that he should consider bringing himself a date.

“I have the perfect person for you!”

“Not today, onee-san.”

“ _Aw_ , are you sure?”

Back at home, the jacket hangs in his closet, freshly ironed and hung. _Bokuto_ calls by the two tickets he’s left in the pocket. 

_Ah._

Akaashi feels the the burn break for his cheeks when he equates the two of them together. He considers his options promptly:

 

**A)** No.   
  
**B)** No.   
  
**C)** No.   
  
**D)** Absolutely not.

 

“Maybe not this time,” Akaashi tells the attendant, when he’s still reminded of spearmint deodorant and a pleasant lemon scent.

  
  


 

 

* * *

 

  
  


 

 

The interhigh arrives, and the interhigh takes.

Akaashi lands from his final set in the semifinals, shoes loud and taunting in a squeak against the floor. The sound of it is worse than the final whistle. He hears a scorekeeper flip to an unsavory number.

The other side spills out in celebration, and Akaashi limps away by Fukie’s help. He's bandaged up by a nurse—where she tells him it's only a minor sprain—and he takes the recommendation of ice, rest, and some time away from court. Konoha even tries to joke that he'll carry Akaashi onto the bus, but laughs whittle away into nothing when he realizes how little levity remains. 

It's quiet on the train ride back. It takes Akaashi ten minutes to realize that Bokuto hasn't taken his seat with them.

“Time to prepare for harukou. That's all we can do now,” the coach says to them, back in the gym. When Akaashi bows, he hears a static ring past his ear drums. _You can do better than this,_ it tells him, and Akaashi isn't sure he can. 

Weary, he looks around the gym. Bokuto still hasn't come back. Before he even gets the chance to ask, Fukie tells everyone he's skipped for the rest of the day, and to expect him back in the morning. Komi calls it _dejected mode: extreme version_ , while Konoha calls it _the abyss,_ and Akaashi just feels a needling urge to get him back in the gym.

“He’ll be all right,” says Konoha. “You know how he is about sulking. Sometimes he’ll drag one of his friends from the baseball team to the batting cages to swing the night away.”

“Or he’ll see how many ice cream sandwiches he can stuff in his mouth,” Yukie sighs. “He still owes me money for that one.”

“How about that time he dragged us to the observation deck of Tokyo Tower to _scream_?” Komi chimes in.

“That was fun, you'll have to admit. I could've sworn we were going to get arrested that night, though.” Yukie laughs. Konoha and Komi follow with a few snickers of their own, while Akaashi lets a small smile sneak through.

Konoha shrugs, throwing off his shoes. “Point is, Akaashi—the guy will always find a way to rebound, no matter what kind of _abyss_ he's landed himself in.” To this, Fukie nods along. “Wouldn’t have elected him captain if he couldn't.”

At once, Akaashi might understand.

( _—or no, that's not it_.)

When the back of his neck burns again, Akaashi thinks he already has. He knows. The static comes rising back in his ears when he leans down to stretch, pleading the same things:

_Can’t you do better than that?_

Akaashi isn't sure. Maybe he never will be. Still, he gets up, not sure of where he'll end up going, and decides that he'd just like to see Bokuto.

_“I believe in the tosses you'll give me!”_

A grin comes upon his face.

He could always rest his ankle later.

Because Akaashi decides, knows, that this is not an evening for patience.

  
  
  
  


 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  
  
  


“Figures.”

Past all his stops at observation decks, batting cages, and the city’s various ice cream shops, Akaashi finds Bokuto at _classic night_ in a movie theater, not the Laputa, feet up atop the seats and all alone for the ending credits. Out of breath, with too much running done on a bad ankle, Akaashi composes himself before seeing him; trying not to limp, he zips his jacket up to his chin, bites the inside of his cheeks with the bare nudge of his teeth, and forces out an exhale. 

“Bokuto-san,” comes the call, quiet enough to be lost, but firm enough to be heard. Undeterred, with nerves still humming from the day, Akaashi rubs down the back of his neck with ever-cool fingers. Steps keep up the aisle and past the guiding lights of the theater tarmac. 

“Hey, Akaashi,” Bokuto says, too small. Akaashi thinks he'd like to build him up again. He takes the seat next to Bokuto, and notices he’s landed himself right in the middle of the row this time.

“Your favorite’s on,” Bokuto proclaims next, chin up, when _Seven Samurai_ starts soon after that, and the two of them watch the first few seconds in silence.

That is when Akaashi realizes, _oh,_ _he remembered,_ and ‘ _oh, he remembered’_ turns into something of a recollection, too: by the small gleam in Bokuto’s eye, Akaashi thinks back to the clubroom, the jacket, and that first fact. 

_It’s my favorite, too,_ Bokuto says in the forefront of his memory, lemon-scented, and Akaashi settles into something comfortable.

They don’t talk about volleyball that night. In fact, they don’t talk much at all: Bokuto stews in all the action, grins up at them like he might want to join in himself, while Akaashi prefers to study quiet scenes and cinematography, whole panoramas and the tiniest onscreen motions. He flinches when Bokuto cheers—because he probably has the worst theater etiquette Akaashi's ever seen—but remembers it's better than watching him sink into the seat cushions, only to disappear. 

For the sake of both of them, Akaashi might accept it, maybe even like it _—_ maybe even crane to see him rise again; but Bokuto doesn't notice, with eyes kept ahead, all brighter by the minute. In secret, Akaashi watches the way Bokuto reclaims the victory in his veins, the way his shoulders swell out of slumping, like he was never meant to stay down in the first place, and thinks back to what Konoha asked him in the gym: _how do you do it, Akaashi-kun? You never seem to lose your cool with him._ Akaashi presses rewind. He knows it is not a matter of tolerance, anymore.

First comes the beginning. The unforgettable first impression. It's the kind that catches Akaashi off-guard, like a scene _in medias res._ He's barefoot in the rain, and Bokuto’s got his hands on his shoulders. Akaashi can't decide if he wants to stay, or go, but he knows he will never forget it. He will not forget him.

Then comes all the little jolts, and the details of the climb, their rise: Bokuto messes up another straight spike. A third year gives up his starting position. There are horror movies and midday naps, and Akaashi learns to share a favorite. _Seven Samurai._ Fukurodani even makes it past qualifying rounds and almost advances to the finals. Bokuto leaps with all his might.

Akaashi gets to the climax and he thinks— _oh—the climax_.

Akaashi’s not even sure he wants to be at that point, because with the peak comes the fall right after it, and he’d like to think he's still working on climbing. Because even if Bokuto is apt to stumble, he never stays down, or dares to break the surface of some endless rift.

Instead, he just thinks back to Konoha’s question again, a question he's been asked more than once over the course of the past couple of months, and replays it anyway.

“You got wrinkles on your forehead, Akaashi.”

It is at this point when Bokuto catches Akaashi staring. He does not fret, or avert, but decides to stay. 

“Oh,” Akaashi says. “Do I?” 

Bokuto smiles. Warmth unfolds. It is neither soft, nor forced, nor clever. It's as easy as Akaashi’s ever seen it.

_How do you do it, Akaashi-kun?_

A memory comes through in a blip. Akaashi is ten again.

_“Have patience, and it'll pay off.”_

All at once, he understands—that being with Bokuto is like sitting through the movies. A cult favorite. An award winner. A director’s worst nightmare. A plethora and a wilderness.

 

 

 

And at this, he smiles back.

  
  


Akaashi Keiji is fifteen when he falls in love for the second time, mid-movie, dumbstruck, and ready to keep watching.

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  
  


_“You think I can do it, Akaashi? You think I'll really make it, this time?”_

Another clean straight spike gets past the defense. The other side never knew what was coming. 

At this, Akaashi leaps up, fists clenched, mouth wide to yell. A moment, _the moment_ arrives _,_ past whatever national rankings they want to place Bokuto in this time, past whatever tournaments they’ll lose or win, and the rest of the team joins suit. 

_“Yes, Bokuto-san. I think you'll make it this time.”_

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Akaashi’s second year proceeds with little caution.

It is on the precipice of summer, a little ways before harukou, when he hears three pieces of unsavory news: one, Bokuto is planning an _abundance_ of team outings this season, two, Bokuto has scouts on him, and three, Bokuto’s also amassed himself a _fan club_ somehow, small in number but dedicated in their passions. Evening hits when Bokuto comes stumbling back into the club room, shoes flying off in Akaashi’s direction, when he announces, for the fifth time this week, _“_ another one confessed to me today. Can you guys hide in here with me for a little while?” 

Konoha laughs. Akaashi nods. He neglects the heat at the back of his neck like an old burn he forgot to treat.

“Aw, what's wrong this time, Bokuto?” Konoha asks, plopping himself on the floor. “Not your type _again_?” 

Akaashi follows, drawing his knees to his chest. Bokuto just flops back, shaking his head on the ground. 

“Akaashi, ask me what's wrong!”

Akaashi sighs.

“Bokuto-san, what's wrong?”

 “Nothing!” How petulant. “Ask me again!”

“Bokuto-san, are you feeling ill?”

“N-no!”

Konoha nudges Akaashi on the shoulder and snickers. “Oh, but can’t you see, Akaashi? He is, in fact, _sick_.”

“Ah.” Akaashi goes into his duffle bag and brings out his personal first aid kit, neat and well stocked. “Do you need an aspirin, Bokuto-san?”

“That’s not the kind of sickness I’m talking about,” Konoha answers. “This is a matter of the metaphysical, _the mind—_ or well, _the heart_ , I should say.” He sneaks up close to Bokuto and lies down next to him, poking him on the cheek. “Isn’t it, Bokuto?”

And then comes a slow nod. Bokuto covers his face with his hands and gulps down, ever dramatic, and Akaashi pretends he hasn’t just swallowed a hundred thumbtacks. When he says the word— _and what an indelicate word it is—_ it is only a whisper, barely heard past the confines of Bokuto’s palms.

“Love.” 

The word is heavy enough that it goes down like cough medicine in Akaashi’s throat.

“I knew it, you sly dog,” Konoha says. “Who is she? Or _he?_ Whoever! How long have you two been going out?”

Bokuto shakes his head. “There's nothing like that,” he insists, somehow finding a way a wilt further into the floor. “Like, to be honest, I don't even really think about it all that much because you know, _volleyball_ and stuff, but it's stuff like _this_ really brings you back to it.” He flings an unopened letter from his pocket and lets it hit the _Tikachu_ poster on the wall. “It's that painful sort, you know? Where you know they’ll never want you back? Oh, what is it called?” 

“Unrequited,” Akaashi answers, dull as he can muster. “It's called being unrequited, Bokuto-san.”

Kohoha hums. “Akaashi certainly seems to know about it.” 

“But yeah! That's the word!” Bokuto says, raising his head off the ground.

“What, did they dump you?” asks Konoha. “Refuse your confession?”

Bokuto shakes his head.

“That's the thing. I never even got the chance _to_ confess. I don't even know their name.”

Akaashi perks up.

“Are you saying you're in love with a _stranger_ , then?”

“No, I mean. It wasn't like in the movies, where you just kinda look across the room and see the love of your life, or whatever,” Bokuto sits up, musing. “I met them, and it only lasted a few minutes, but it was important. I was having a really hard time that first year, remember? I couldn't hit worth _shit._ ”

Konoha hums out a sigh. “Ah yes, I remember. You were a nightmare to be around, even though we all told you you'd be _just fucking fine_ , Bokuto.”

“Well, anyway—point is, I was having a really hard time, okay? I don't really know to describe it, but it really felt like that kind of worry that just—takes over your entire body! I couldn't eat! I couldn't sleep! I didn't look where I was going. I bumped into a lot of telephone poles.”

“Okay. So you're saying this person helped you out, then?” Konoha asks. “What? Did they just flip a switch?”

Bokuto shakes his head. “They were just, I don't know. _There for me_. I guess that's all it was. Like...oh, how do I put this? _Like_ , a breeze on the riverbank when you’ve got sweat on your neck after a summer run! It was just a nice feeling!”

“And that's what love is to you?” Konoha asks. “A nice feeling?”

Akaashi peers up, perhaps a bit too quick. Konoha turns towards him, in a flicker of recognition.

( _But oh please_ , _let it die,_ Akaashi thinks.)

( _Maybe_ pleads.)

Bokuto leans down to press a palm against his cheek, legs all criss-crossed, and his eyes go distant like he’s living another life altogether. “Aw, come on now,” Bokuto relents with a frown, just a tad hushed. He even laughs. “You gotta give me more credit than that. There are just some things you can’t put into words—and I’ve already got enough problems with that. Right, Akaashi?”

“Ah.” Akaashi looks away, sure the heat has spread to his cheeks. “Sure, Bokuto-san.”

Again, Konoha darts a glance over at Akaashi in turn. It turns into a dead on stare this time, the sort that says, _oooh, I’m onto you, Akaashi Keiji,_ but he doesn’t press on any further about it. He just wiggles an eyebrow, which makes Akaashi supremely uncomfortable, and smacks himself over the knees in finality.

“ _Fine_ ,” Konoha sighs. “Who am I to tell you what you feel, anyway? And— _bleh,_ why are we even getting into this stuff?” With a duffle bag slung over his shoulder, he hops up from the ground. “Anyway, I’m going to go home now. If I see anymore of the _Bokuto_ fan club camped out at school, I’ll text either one of you. I just gotta get out of here before I catch your _germs_.”

When he says this, he’s got his eyes on Akaashi, but shows the both of them a peace sign before heading out the door. 

“Say, Akaashi, while we’re here, why don't we decide on this week’s team activity?” Bokuto asks when they're alone, already on about the _next big thing_. Akaashi silently recovers by exhaling through his teeth, brushing up close to Bokuto without touching, and keeping at their usual distance.

“Okay, but not for too long. My mother is making nanohana with mustard again tonight.” 

“You and your _nanohana!_ I should make that for you instead of a birthday cake,” Bokuto insists. 

“Please don't go through the trouble, Bokuto-san.”

Notepads out and homework neglected, the two of them plan out the next **_HOOT HOOT HANGOUT EXTRAVAGANZA (part six)_** and devolve into unfinished lists and dark cloud pen scribbles. Akaashi even takes the liberty of doodling Kikuchiyo from _Seven Samurai_ along the grid lines, to which Bokuto gasps. “I didn't know you could draw, too, Akaashi!” he exclaims, taking the notepad into his hands. “The team made a good decision, electing you as my right hand man!”

A smack comes upon Akaashi’s back, and he stays in a tiny hunch. “It's nothing. Don't you like _Seven Samurai,_ Bokuto-san?” he asks, changing the subject. 

“Oh! Yeah! I do,” Bokuto says. “Though...I always find it hard to remember all the character’s names. Actually, I don't know any of them, seeing that I've only seen it once.”

“Ah.”

“I mean…” Bokuto shakes his head. “I mean, the reason it's my favorite is because, well.” He takes the time to—quite literally—bite his tongue. “Never mind! It's a dumb reason.”

Akaashi blinks. “I don’t think so.”

Bokuto sits more upright than he ever has before, building the bravado in his lungs. “Well, um. _Okay._ I mean, it has to do with Konoha’s question before, and I didn’t want to him _everything_ because he’d just make fun of me later, but well, it has to do with that _movie_ and—”

A text message from Konoha rings across the screen. Bokuto deflates. Akaashi goes to read it out loud.

“They’re still looming around the school grounds,” he drones. “I think I saw them headed towards the clubroom after they saw me, too. Deepest apologies.”

Bokuto hops up. “Damn it! I thought I lost them!” He goes up to switch the lights off in the room, feet caught in the most ill-positioned twirl. He takes a fall onto his back after that, already thoroughly weakened by a day’s worth of love confessions and Konoha’s interrogations, that all he can do is laugh.

Akaashi brushes a finger against his lips when he hears footsteps. A girl giggles. Another boy asks about learning that _bastard straight spike of his._ In silence, he offers Bokuto a hand, crouched before him, and feels his fingers slide along his palm.

“The character’s name is Kikuchiyo,” Akaashi finishes for him, and Bokuto’s face lights up like the stars above. He mashes his mouth closed, even though they both know he wants to say something, and keeps himself in Akaashi’s hands instead.

It turns into the firmest grip, and the two of them help each other get on their feet. Bokuto tilts his head, smiles with the only kind of confidence a third year captain could be capable of, and lets all contact fall away.

_Captain._ Of course. A captain’s duty is to be kind, and courteous, and close. Other intentions should not be considered, and Akaashi knows he cannot keep closing their distance. He knows he should not be counting their centimeters in the first place. 

And yet, but still—past the rumble of a knocking door, past the fans that call, the obscurity of a city night—Akaashi does it, anyway. He observes. The space between their shoe tips equals to the distance of a 35mm film strip, and this might be the closest they've ever gotten. 

Bokuto laughs, unaware. 

Akaashi steps back, observing the minimal space between them on the floor. He knows he must widen it.

  
  
  
  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  
  
  


It’s a Sunday evening when Akaashi’s mother notices the printed pages on his desk, an internet article inconspicuously titled **_“How to Forget Someone in Five Easy Steps.”_** She holds it up, mouth agape, and Akaashi nearly drops the tray of tea and snacks he’s made himself for a late night of made-up homework.

“Who broke your heart, Keiji?” she asks, ever-dramatic. “Do I have to break out the broom from the closet?” 

Akaashi sets down the tray at his desk, quickly takes the pages from her, and folds them into his back pocket. “No one did,” he insists, pulling out a rolling chair for his mother to sit in. “I’m just preparing,” comes his admission instead, all a matter-of-fact. 

“ _Oh, Keiji_ ,” she says, always in that motherly way, the type that makes Akaashi’s stomach churn, because she need not say anything else.

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

  


**_ step one: _ ** **_this person isn’t perfect! Remember their faults and hone in on them. After all—it’s not all peaches and cream! There must be a dealbreaker somewhere!_ **

 

After school on a Monday, right on the precipice of summer break, Akaashi watches the way Bokuto slurps up his ramen, all hunched over on his barstool. They always say, _the louder the slurp, the higher the compliments to the chef,_ but he’s always been _excessive_ about it without any signs of stopping. There’s even a whole trail of crumpled napkins as further evidence of his carnage, and he never breaks his chopsticks cleanly, and Akaashi doesn't even want to address the volume of his chewing; it's a giant mess, the unforgivable sort, and Akaashi cannot help but stare. 

“Huh? Is there something on my face, Akaashi?”

_Well, yes._  

Akaashi ignores the funny way he catches the tip of a bean sprout in the crevice between his nose and his cheek, how he saves his pork chop for last because “ _Protein! Protein is important!_ ” (and how Bokuto was always extra enthusiastic about semi-fried meats—regardless of nutritional merit). There’s gyoza sauce on his lip, and Akaashi imagines, against all will, what he’d look like with a beauty mark in that very same position. 

(So _yes,_ he'd consider that staring.)

Without answering, Akaashi leaves his bowl half-finished, because he realizes he isn't even that hungry, _anyway_. He waits for Bokuto to engulf his (with secret scolds made towards _five easy steps_ in the meanwhile), and flinches when he sees a plate of nanohana and mustard sauce arrive at the table. 

“Oh, excuse me,” Akaashi calls after the waitress. “I think this is a mistake. I don't remember ordering this.”

“Oi, but isn't that your favorite, Akaashi?”

“Well, yes.”

“Good! I ordered it for you while you were calling your mom.” 

“I’m sorry, Bokuto-san?” _You remembered?_

“You heard me! You’re gonna need all that extra strength for training camp, won’t ya?” 

Akaashi looks down at his new meal, takes a morsel of it between his chopsticks, and scolds _five easy steps_ a second time.

(No matter if Bokuto says he hates the taste of mustard.) 

(Because Akaashi cannot help but wonder if actual _dealbreakers_ are hard to come by.)

  
  
  


 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  


 

 

**_ step two: _ ** **_meet new people! Go on dates! Not only will this keep you occupied, you might meet someone new in the process. This is your opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Meet someone you might sync better with!_ **

 

Akaashi’s second date to the Laputa theater occurs in the summer season, when he is sixteen, sick of the heat, and fatigued from an eternity at training camp. He arranges for a showing of _Ikiru_ with Karasuno’s Ennoshita Chikara, fellow movie lover (and—as he’d learn within the first five minutes of this not-date—an amateur director in the making). It is mostly an enjoyable time, because they have the same taste in movies, and Ennoshita can’t help but _beam_ because he’s always wanted to come here to the Laputa.

They split the cost of tickets at the door, arrive an hour earlier than the start time, and Akaashi gives him the usual tour within its confines. He shows Ennoshita the wall of ivy outside and the winding bare-bones stairs, to which Ennoshita says, _exclaims,_ that this place really _was_ inspired by the likes of Studio Ghibli _._ Ennoshita _really_ lights up when they make it to the projection room, and he gets to handle the old 35mm film they keep in old tins.

“You know, they say nitrate film is more flammable than paper,” Ennoshita explains. “It burns real quick.” 

Akaashi nods. “They stopped using it in 1954, right?”

“ _1951_ , actually,” Ennoshita corrects him. “But, um. Ignore me. There was a time last year where I had a ton of free time and started looking into all this stuff. I know more about the making of _Rashomon_ than any human being really needs to know, to be honest. Maybe I need volleyball to make sure that doesn't happen again.”

And so they watch movies together. It’s a nice time. A single showing of _Ikiru_ turns into two, and they sit outside and chat outside after their third. Ennoshita talks about how wild Karasuno’s second years are, and how their first years might give them a run for their money, if they aren’t careful. Akaashi nods along to this, because he can certainly relate, and thinks that any team run by teenage boys might always find something unruly. He thinks of the third gym, of Kuroo and Lev and that glasses kid from Karasuno, of wild leaps and bickering and well, _that bastard straight spike,_ now more of a behemoth _._ At once, his mind drifts to the fanclubs at the end of every _boom_ , and all the scouts that mean to capitalize on it.

Without meaning to, Akaashi thinks of Bokuto.

(In turn, Ennoshita Chikara says it’s written all over his face.)

“Huh?”

“You don’t have to explain,” says Ennoshita. He couples this with a sigh, but it doesn’t hang heavy. “Sometimes it’s nice just to have company, regardless. The other second years have no patience for old movies. I guess it’s hard when everyone’s got volleyball on their minds right now.” 

“I mean, I guess we should, too.”

“Ha! That’s right,” Ennoshita concedes. “We should get back before they say something. It’s already late.” 

And so they do, without further pretense or expectation. It’s an easy trip back to Shinzen. Ennoshita suggests they should exchange numbers outside their respective classrooms, because he says he could always use another cameraman on set for his next project. Akaashi dances around it at first, thinks of the politest denials, because _harukou is coming up and I probably won’t have the time_ , _plus Bokuto-san’s going to work me into the ground and—_ no. He huffs out an exhale, determined.

“I’ll think about it,” Akaashi ends up telling Ennoshita instead, and the two of them exchange numbers.

(And while nothing more comes out of this, he can be glad to say, many years later, that at least he got to make a friend.)

  
  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  


 

 

**_ step three: _ ** **_try to distance yourself from this person. The heart DOES NOT grow fonder with the separation._ **

 

When Akaashi finishes getting ready for the night ( _and is it a late night_ ), the only empty futon is the one right next to Bokuto by the windows.

It’s two in the morning, the kind of _two in the morning_ that makes Akaashi wonder if the world has fallen dead at his feet, and he thinks this might be the perfect time to sneak back in without repercussion. Tip-toeing past the stacked desks and the outstretched arms of dreaming boys, towel still in hand, he makes it to his futon in the smallest crouch, takes note of a moon’s bright gleam ( _too bright_ ), and gets up to take care of the curtains.

“Akaashi?” comes a whisper, loud in its own way. 

Akaashi does not dare to look back. Hands stay scrunched along the edge of cloth.

“Bokuto-san.” 

“Where have you been? We were looking for you before,” Bokuto says, all groggy. “You missed a team hangout after practice tonight.”

“Ah,” Akaashi whispers. “I went out with someone from Karasuno. We both wanted to see _Ikiru_.”

There's a shift of covers and the small stretch of a yawn too loud for _two a.m_. In instinct, Akaashi looks over his shoulder to shush Bokuto, point of a finger ready to come over his lips to scold.

“I know, I know, I’ll keep quiet!” says Bokuto, awake in an instant. Smiles all cheeky, he’s got an old _Tikachu_ t-shirt on, hair down and still a tad wet, like he’d been waiting for Akaashi until just recently; at this, Akaashi wonders if Bokuto’s mother ever taught him to _not to sleep on damp hair,_ and if he was just the type to not fear the reaper (or a mild case of the nasty summer cold). 

“You’re going to wake up with a sore neck, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi warns. From there, it’s a wordless endeavor, crawling across his futon to the edge of Bokuto’s. Akaashi veils the towel over him, hands clapping both sides of his captain’s head before letting go, and Bokuto just laughs.

At this, Komi jolts up, screams something about _SHUTTING UP (and “HEAVENS ABOVE GO GET A ROOM ALREADY”),_ before falling right back asleep. It is a miracle the rest of the team does not wake. 

“Did you have a good time, Akaashi?” Bokuto asks anyway, crawling right back under the covers. He looks like a child, hidden under his blanket and the towel, and Akaashi can only follow suit under his own.

“I’m sorry?” Akaashi asks, flipping to face him.

“Well, you don’t gotta talk about it, and I won’t tell anyone else where you’ve been. But I know it’s hard to find people on the team who like old movies, too, and I’m glad you did!” Akaashi can tell Bokuto means this, just as another _shh!_ comes from the other end of the room. “I mean, well, as long as _you don’t do it again_. That’s what a captain should say, right?”

The way Bokuto asks this, joking but not, casual but insistent, head tucked slightly downward, tells Akaashi all that he needs to know. _Am I doing all right?_ he asks, without asking at all, and Akaashi picks an answer at a certain kind of lightspeed. 

“You’re doing just fine as you are, Bokuto-san,” he says with a smile, and Bokuto lights up from the sight of it. All bright and warm _but cool_ , like an yellowed autumn moon in summer. 

“ _Ha_. Well, in any case, I’m glad to have my setter back,” he says with the littlest care in the world. _My setter._ Akaashi feels his head beat like a buoy on rough water. 

“Ah. Yeah.” 

And just like that, the quiet between them runs rampant. Crickets perform their symphonies outside, while a table fan whirs in the corner. Some teammates snore while others draw in hearty breaths, and the wind of rushing cars howls from some distant freeway. _Because a city night is never a silent night_ , Akaashi thinks, but in the rumble and constant fury, he might be tempted to say, _I like you this way, anyway._

  
  
  
  


 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  
  


 

 

In the drawl of such a night, one boy calls to another, hazy in attempted sleep.

“Night, Akaashi.” 

Bokuto holds out a closed fist from under his futon, ready for the briefest contact. 

Akaashi looks out, denying the chance to be hopeful. He will not be caught in his wilderness, but will not make the effort at distance, either. He convinces himself that it is no crime to stay.

“Good night, Bokuto-san,” he tells him, and the two of them drift without letting their hands part from the bump.

  
  
  
  


 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  
  


 

 

**_ step four _ ** **_: throw yourself into your passions! Remember your hobbies and keep yourself busy if dating doesn't work. This will certainly help you!_ **

 

By his second harukou, Akaashi hardly has the time to think about Bokuto _in that way_ , especially when the camera flashes go off again for zine spotlights, scouting sessions, _and the making of Tokyo urban lore_ ; with another leap into the heavens, that behemoth straight spike in top form all morning, Akaashi lands on his feet and watches the perfect toss sail right towards Bokuto’s line of view.

Another moment, _the moment_ arrives _,_ past whatever national rankings they’ll want to place Bokuto now (he’ll probably crack the nation’s top three in time for recruitment season), past whatever games they may lose or win, and past the surliest odds of _making it all the way_. Akaashi leaps up at Bokuto’s call, as loud and ringing as a captain should be, and never backs down. 

(Because Akaashi, just as his mother has always said, _could flow as easy as water._ He just doesn't want to today. He’d much prefer to rise with the waves.) 

_“You think I can do it, Akaashi? You think I'll really make it, this time?”_

_“Yes, Bokuto-san. I think you'll make it this time.”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Well, I think you will too,”_ Bokuto tells him, and the memory is sweet. It fuels him, just in time for one of his patented _Akaashi Keiji_ dump shots.

_“And no one’s ever going to see you coming.”_

  
  
  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  


 

 

 

And they don't. But not to the very end.

Akaashi traces his hands along the red bracket lines, stopping at the point where _Fukurodani High School_ was eliminated at the national level, and lets his fingertip ride to the very top in wishful thinking. 

Next to him, Konoha observes that Akaashi’s hands are shaking, but it's okay, because he says _everyone’s_ hands are shaking by now, and that it'd be better to get the jitters out before getting on the train back.

“Where did Bokuto go?” he asks next, and Akaashi does not take his eyes off the board. He just shifts over, vaguely over the door so no one can get their way into the other room, shaking hands over the knob. Konoha immediately catches his drift.

“That bad, is it?” Konoha sighs. “Well, I'll let you handle that, then. We’re starting to board, anyway.”

Akaashi nods, still cotton-mouthed, still too sore in the throat to say anything, and lets Konoha prod their other teammates into packing faster. One by one, they trickle out of the hallway, until only a captain and co-captain remain in the wake. On the other side, Akaashi presses himself close against the door, his knock barely one at all. 

“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi finds the voice to call, hoarse in its whisper. “Bokuto-san, it's time to go.” He hears something hushed, mumbled, in the other room, and jolts into place when the door comes rushing open.

“Ah, I know you,” a man in a purple Tsukuba University cap says, bowing his head lightly. “Fukurodani’s setter, right? Your team fought valiantly today.”

“Thank you,” Akaashi says, bowing in turn. 

“Quite valiant indeed,” the man comments again, trailing off. “Just what we need.” A wrinkled gaze falls away into the other room, and Akaashi follows it all the way back to him. _To Bokuto._ He makes himself tear away in the next instant.

The Tsukuba cap. _Just what we need_. A precise line of vision, with eyes on the prize. Akaashi understands at once, and offers the politest goodbye when the university scout takes his leave down the hall.

“Akaashi,” comes the name, firm against the dull roar of a final game outside. 

“Yes, Bokuto-san?”

“Has everyone else left already?” Bokuto asks. 

“Yes, Bokuto-san.”

“Okay, then. I'll meet you guys at the station. I just have a few things to collect, you know, because I wanna triple check and make sure I haven't forgotten anything,” he insists, and Akaashi knows this is a lie. Because if _dejected modes_ have taught him anything the past two years, it's that Bokuto never takes the train back with the team after a loss; when he sees the way Bokuto’s hand shakes too, his cheeks light up, eyes perpetually stuck on the abyss of an open duffle bag, Akaashi knows this isn't the time to let him.

“I'll wait,” Akaashi says, against all better judgement, because he's not supposed to be here anyway, because _five steps_ had called for distance and all preventative measures—but still, _against all better judgement_ , he'll let himself stay, and Bokuto doesn't deny him. 

“I…” he starts, already a mess by fumbled nonwords. “They... _Tsukuba_ came to me just now. They—they want me to play for them. They want to _recruit_ me.” 

Akaashi nods. “I predicted that's what it was about.” He tries to smile about it.

“But we lost,” he says. “We _lost,_ Akaashi.”

“I know.” Of course he does. 

“So how could they want _me_?” Bokuto breathes out. He sounds like he's about to cry, but he's doing everything in his power to hold it in. “When _we lost_ and I'm no good and the _worst_ captain ever, the worst in the history of Fukurodani, and—”

“Bokuto-san, there's no need to exaggerate—” 

“But I’m _not_ , am I?” He smacks his duffle bag from the bench, and Akaashi does not flinch. A roll of gauze flees the scene. Packets of chocolate protein powder escape their confines. It’s a mess, always a mess, heavy heaved with fists balled. Bokuto clenches his teeth between exhales. Akaashi reads his mind by wordless signals. 

_We lost nationals. I'm getting scouted. We lost nationals. I'm getting scouted. We lost nationals. I'm getting scouted. We lost nationals. I'm getting scouted—_

“Bokuto-san.” 

At once, a pair of hands stop their stammer. Akaashi does not panic.

“You can go. I'm just going to walk all the way home,” Bokuto laments, even quieter than usual, and Akaashi does not think to go. His head does not whir in the usual options.

No A, or B, or C—

Or D— 

_We lost nationals. I'm getting scouted. We lost nationals. I'm getting scouted. We lost nationals. I'm getting scouted. We lost nationals. I'm getting scouted—_

To calm a wild card heart, and the wilderness in his captain’s head, Akaashi comes close, wraps his arms around him, and seeks to stay. It does not take long for Bokuto to stay right back.

“ _Akaashi_.”

Bokuto breaks, but close enough to admit to it, and Akaashi decides they can just take the train back together later.

  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  


 

**_ step five: _ ** **_remember that all things take time. You can’t get over someone in a day. It'll happen when it happens._ **

  
  
  


 

 

* * *

 

  
  


Graduation day arrives, and graduation day takes.

Bokuto holds a bouquet of flowers, looks to the camera, and smiles at his setter at very last second before the flash. At this, Akaashi waves back, wearily, before realizing what little strength he's built for goodbyes; when he feels his knees wobble under him, the tremble of hands and the twitch of tossless fingers, he wonders if he might enter his very own particular version of a world famous _dejected mode_ —but he doesn't, because he _can't_ , and he remembers everything from _five steps_ to his mother’s words. Things take time, and so will getting over Bokuto Koutarou.

Today is not the day. Another flash goes off, and Bokuto does not take his eyes off Akaashi.

_“Akaashi!”_  

In turn, the setter beckons to him, chin raised, to _give his mother a nice photo for once._  

“Hey, _Akaashi!_ ”

Bokuto lifts an outspread hand into the air, loud from across the courtyard. “Won't you take a picture with me?” he asks, and Akaashi loses the will to move.

Today is not the day.

This is when he thinks, _recollects_ , back to that time in Laputa theater. He sees the way Bokuto’s face fall, _because this is the end—_ but then rise, _because it isn't—_ and Akaashi remembers why they must keep climbing.

  
  
  


He takes this sentiment with him, all the way back to the club room where Bokuto used to reign, after the ceremony and the pictures and the goodbyes, because he still has a few things to pack up— 

All the way to the touch of his hand, because he looks like he needs a hand to hold—

Or, _two_ , in all honesty—

And all the way to his first kiss, because things will take time, and getting over Bokuto Koutarou will take time, so he he might as well go for it now, even if Bokuto does not kiss back—

But in fact, he does, and this breaks Akaashi’s heart all the more—

But it's okay, _more than okay_ —  


 

 

Because just as a good movie should be, it is devastating, _uplifting_ , and Akaashi will take it all the same.

  
  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  


 

(Akaashi Keiji is seventeen when he falls, a third time.)

  



	3. Chapter 3

 

 

 

“I’m going to be leaving this place soon, Akaashi-kun.”

“He proposed?”

“ _Finally_.” 

Akaashi stares up at the ticket booth, at the ring on the chain around his favorite attendant’s neck, and offers her a smile. She’s got post-its hanging out of the old magazine pages she really wants to save, and tells him the wedding will be in a year’s time. 

“It’ll be a spring ceremony at the Laputa,” she announces upon the usual ticket exchange, and Akaashi says to save his RSVP early. She even asks about bringing a date, _because I have the perfect person for you,_ and Akaashi just tells her he’ll think about it.

“Aw _,_ Keiji-kun—everything okay with you? You’re even quieter than usual,” she remarks, and Akaashi nods by the barest motions.

“Ah, well.” He doesn't want to tell her how much he hates this one biology seminar he's in at university, or how much he's missed playing volleyball, or playing volleyball _with him_. “It’s nothing I can’t handle,” he ends up fronting instead. “It will soon come to pass.” 

“Well, let me know, all right? Anything for the Laputa’s most loyal patron.” 

“I _do not_ come here that often.”

“Let's just agree to disagree. Hey, why don't you get a job here? I started when I was in university, too, you know. I'll even give you the most decent referral.”

“ _Sure_ , onee-san,” Akaashi sighs, small and under his breath, before ordering himself a large cherry cola.

  
  
  
  


 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  


 

 

“I got a job at the Laputa.”

“What?” Ennoshita Chikara peers up from his laptop screen, pencil still in between his lips and _screenplay number thirty-three_ in his hands. “And _when_ were you going to tell me this?”

Akaashi shrugs. “It just happened today. I could use the extra money,” he says simply, dipping to finish up the rest of his instant ramen, and Ennoshita clicks his tongue at lost opportunities. 

“I must've put in fifteen applications for that place since moving to the city!”

“Deepest apologies.” Akaashi offers the smallest bow of his head.

“Well, I'm too busy, anyway,” Ennoshita insists, ducking back down to do research for an experimental film, _an epic space cooking dramedy_ he's tentatively called _Cheese! Eternal Equinox._ As a recent migrant to Tokyo, Akaashi’s new roommate had been itching for a certain life in the city—the rose-colored sort with irises on the window sill and _cool_ part-time jobs slinging tickets at old theaters—but Ennoshita had been much too busy filming pigeons and old classmates to really reap his metropolitan ideal. (“ _Oh, it's not all bad, though,_ ” he claims, even if he's thought about quitting a few times after grueling days on set.)

Akaashi doesn't blame him either way though, because he had been busy getting adjusted, too; university had been a different animal in itself for the first year, with its classes and expectations and the lack of volleyball, and he was still getting used it.

“Akaashi.”

Like a small burn, Akaashi feels a familiar twitch in his fingers. He imagines a feather-light toss, four millimeters above the net, and him hitting it. It's harukou again. Interhigh. Some place where they're still playing together.

“Akaashi!”

He snaps out of his dream. Ramen noodles slide off his chopsticks and hit the soup in a splash. “Sorry—” he says, because he's probably zoned off again, and he makes another mental note to _stop doing that,_ “what were you saying?”

Ennoshita frowns a little, right by the scrunch of his nose. “As I was _saying_ —how was your date with that, um...who was he again?”

“It was an actor from the theater department, but it wasn't a date,” Akaashi corrects him. He doesn't mention that it had started off as one, but there isn't much to say when it's just a matter of _not clicking_. It had been a pleasant enough time anyway, because the Laputa was showing _Ugetsu_ that night (he had never seen that one before), and it was also a matter of something his mother told him, long ago— _that he was like water, and he’d flow with the best of them._

And so he had. 

(It just wasn't with the best of them.)

“Ah, well,” Ennoshita laughs. “Who even cares at this point, right? We’re all still young.”

Akaashi nods into the remnants of his meal without answering. Swallowing down, he lets the whir of a city silence take over, daunting and limitless, and remembers to take his mind off of him.

“Hey,” Ennoshita calls, a test, and Akaashi listens this time.

“Yes?”

“Wanna start unpacking our boxes?” Ennoshita asks. “It’s about time we break this place in.”

  
  
  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  
  


 

By the time they’ve almost finished unpacking, Ennoshita has fallen asleep on the floor of his room, feet out the door and dead to the morning. The sun has barely risen when Akaashi wakes up to the dull rattle of a knocking door, the faint smell of lemon and a certain deodorant, and the realization that he’s fallen asleep (possibly _drooled_ ) on a jacket his mother must've packed by accident. He folds it and leaves it in one of the boxes before straightening himself out, matting out the wrinkles of a stale dress shirt, and decides, against his better judgement, to answer the door. 

He wonders who it could be at six in the morning, hands on the knob, and makes a few quick guesses before peering through the peephole:

 **A)** A neighbor who's gotten locked out of their apartment, because this is _Shibuya_ , all sprawling, all wild, and people are bound to get locked out of their apartments—

Or **B)** , Nishinoya Yuu, an old classmate of Ennoshita’s, who's been _begging_ , _just begging,_ to start a video blog with him, on top of his duties as starting libero on a university team, for a miniseries called _Rolling Thunder_ (whatever was _Rolling Thunder_ was)— 

Or **C)** , his mother, because she liked to come over every once a while, all to fuss and feed the two of them with home cooked meals, because where else was he going to eat _nanohana with mustard_ , and Akaashi was always forgetting things back at home anyway, like books and shoes and a certain team jacket—

Or **D)** , the certain jacket bearer in question, but probably not, because it's never him, because he's on the other side of the city chasing a dream, one bigger than national rankings or Fukurodani, even; because Akaashi is apt to tell himself, _I'm content with the monthly phone call,_ or occasional appearances at the karaoke lounge (or whatever Kohona plans for these last minute get-togethers); because it's _Bokuto Koutarou_ —a wild card, a wilderness—and there would be no point in such expectations.

So, not **D).** Never **D)**.

This is what Akaashi decides, resigned to the truth of it, when he opens the door to, well— 

“Akaashi!” 

— **D)**.

Bokuto Koutarou drops his duffel bag in the hallway, rips the sweatband off his forehead, and smiles wider than the morning sun. He's been running, hard, judging from how hard he's breathing, and Akaashi can only say, “ _ah,_ well, good morning to you, too, Bokuto-san—” and “ _wait,_ just _why_ are you here, Bokuto-san?”

Bokuto rubs the back of his head, nervous like he's been indicted for the most heinous crime of, let’s say, _candy theft_. “Well, so, I couldn't sleep last night,” he starts, “because today's the first day of trial practice, and when I mean _trial_ I mean—”

“The Olympics,” Akaashi finishes with a smile, small but well meant. “Yukie-san told me the other day, when we went to lunch. Congratulations.”

“Thank you! It's just—” Bokuto says, “it's just, I mean, as I was saying, I couldn't sleep, because it's the _Olympics,_ and I started thinking about horror movies, you know, like that time we watched them my second year, and then I started thinking about _Ju-On_ and everything else, and then before you know it, it's four in the morning and I'm still _staring at the ceiling—_ ”

“I understand,” Akaashi says with a sigh, tugging on Bokuto’s sleeve and pulling him into the apartment. “You had the face of a ghost in your mind and scared yourself. I get it.”

He meanders into the kitchen and Bokuto follows, droopier by the second. “Well, no, it's more like—I started thinking about _everything_ and... _augh_. How I even begin to put this?”

“Breakfast,” Akaashi suggests. “Eat first, before you pass out from the excitement.” He swipes himself a pan from a cupboard above, holds it up by the handle, and switches on the stove behind him. “Besides, if we're both up, we might as well eat.”

Bokuto blinks a few times before folding into himself. He smiles again. “I, well—I'm not that hungry, to be honest.” 

“Oh.” Leaving the pan in the sink, Akaashi leans up against the counter and takes the time to really observe Bokuto, motionless, like a quiet scene a movie. His hair’s subdued itself from the wild part today, more apt to rest as a fringe, and his eyes _are_ a little red from the lack of sleep.

 _Tea, maybe,_ he decides as a remedy. He could use a cup, too.

Akaashi reaches back to switch the stove on, and the sound of a _click_ reminds him of smacking lips. Graduation day. He flicks the thought out of his mind, remembers that impulse should better left to rest—because Bokuto’s got enough of that for the both of them—and that any more would result in the most apt _overload_. He resigns himself to plopping a kettle on the fire, eyes ahead, and ignores his shaking hands and the city silence.

Fingers drumming, head a haze, he lets them skirt too close to a heated kettle. He recoils, clicking his tongue at the singe, and steps back. A heel meets the tip of Bokuto’s foot, and Akaashi wonders if this morning was built to kill him. 

Bokuto doesn't protest. He takes Akaashi’s hand instead, wrapped firmly within the confines of his own, and lets them stay at their certain distance. Akaashi looks down at his feet, remembers to exhale, and thinks of the space between them. 35mm, maybe. The width of a flammable film strip.

“Hey, Akaashi, did you burn yourself? _Oh—_ wait, you can't tell if I'm holding your hand, right? Let me just—”

“Ah, no, it's fine,” Akaashi tells him. “It's...okay.”

Water simmers from the lid, and a clean steam rises into the air. A kettle comes to the verge of whistling.

“Hey, Akaashi,” Bokuto calls, still behind him.

“Yes, Bokuto-san?”

“It’s just nice, you know, being here. I knew coming to see you was a good idea,” Bokuto says with all the pride in the world; it sounds like the way he used to say _co-captain_ —or better yet, _my setter,_ and Akaashi can only feel that familiar heat by his hairline. He hopes Bokuto cannot see it.

“I feel calmer already,” he tells Akaashi instead, after the tiniest bout of non-silence, the rumble of a kettle about to boil.

At once, Akaashi understands.

“Bokuto-san.”

“Yeah?”

“You don't need me to tell you this.” 

“Tell me what?” 

“That everything will work out. Trials. Try-outs.”

Bokuto doesn't say anything. Akaashi thinks he might go into one of his world famous _dejected modes_ , that he might just let go of Akaashi’s hand and leave to sulk alone at the top of towers and by the side of riverbanks, but he doesn't, because they've _both_ grown by now, and it is possible to carve paths out in a wilderness. 

“I know,” Bokuto answers, laughing. Light. A little bit of a lie. “It's just nice, being here, I guess.”

Akaashi hums, too tired to pretend he's anything else.

“Okay, then. You can stay.” _Just this once._

A kettle begins to whistle, impatient, and Akaashi promptly shuts the gas off the stove. Hands remain held, daring, and the two of them don't say a word until Bokuto proclaims he _despises black tea._

“Ah, well, that's the only kind I have right now, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi proclaims, rattling a jar of tea leaves. 

“What! What good is this place for, then? I'm leaving!”

“Okay. Bye, Bokuto-san.” 

“Wait! I'm just kidding, _kidding_! I'll take some, if you're drinking it, too.”

“All right, Bokuto-san.”

“And hey, Akaashi!”

A sigh. “Yes?” Akaashi asks, fixing their cups. 

“Would you mind if I came back to see you? Just like this?”

Akaashi grins down at the counter. He hopes that none of this is a dream, and to Bokuto’s question he's tempted to answer, _I've missed you too, Bokuto-san._

But he just tells him, “whatever you’d like to do,” which might as well be the same, and the two of them settle down for breakfast tea.

  
  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  


 

 

 

Akaashi studies film theory on one side of the city, and Bokuto plays volleyball on the other. It's the strangest sort of coexistence, because it's _barely a coexistence at all_ , save the fact that they can still find a way to meet in the middle; but Akaashi can't complain about it, because they've both got things to do, people to meet, and places to be, and it'd be wrong to settle for the ease of _always being together_. 

(Because, contrary to the written testament of _“How to Forget Someone in Five Easy Steps,”_ step four, there had been _some_ fondness in separation, even the smallest sort, the achiest sort, and it was enough to keep a heart on guard.) 

(At this, Akaashi taps the center of his chest with a tiny fist before checking his text messages. His phone had rung five times, relentless. Definitely Bokuto.)

**_Akaashi! Let's go eat shaved ice tonight!!_ **

**_And go running on the riverbank!!_**  

**_Batting cages!!_ **

**_Homerun!_ **

**_The Asakusa Samba Festival!!!_ **

 

Akaashi sighs and flops back onto his futon, too drowsy to move, too summer-drunk to complain about the heat. 3:45 A.M, his phone reads, AKA the first time Bokuto’s contacted him in three days, and he's tempted to just _not answer;_ but he outdoes himself, lifting the receiver to his ear with Bokuto’s number dialed. (Memorized, really.) 

_“Akaashi! You called me!”_

Bokuto answers promptly, out of breath, because he's probably running around the neighborhood again—he's got his first spotlight with a local newspaper tomorrow morning, and Akaashi remembers him talking about how nervous he was about it. ‘ _Oh, what if I forget all my words? Kuroo will make fun of me for ages!_ ’ Bokuto had said over a plate of barbecued meats last Thursday, fists pounding the table, and Akaashi could only tell him the usual: _please settle down, Bokuto-san. Please eat your yakiniku, Bokuto-san. Everything will be okay, Bokuto-san_. 

 _“Hey, are you there?”_  

Akaashi sits up in bed. “I'm here.”

 _“So, what do you think of shaved ice tomorrow, then?”_ Another deep breath. “ _That Samba festival? Won't it be fun?”_

“I don't really know anything about samba, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi tells him, still groggy. “And if you want to do shaved ice tomorrow, you'll have to wait until the evening.”

_“Aw, that's fine! The interview’s in the morning, anyway. What are you even up to?”_

Akaashi sighs. “I'm filming all day tomorrow for a project. An exercise in scene study. Nature.”

 _“Sounds boring."_  

“It's okay. It's good to get out of the house, after all that editing.” 

 _“And I'm sure it's going to be great! So you said you'd be filming nature, right? What's it going to be? Some ants? A_ waterfall _?”_ Conviction rings loud in his voice, and Akaashi almost feels like laughing. 

“No, nothing of that sort,” Akaashi answers. “I wanted to study the waves, so I'm going to Isshiki Beach.” 

_“What? In Hayama?”_

“That's the one.”

_“Is Ennoshita going with you?”_

“No, he hates the heat, so I'll be shooting his video blog all day in the apartment tomorrow.”

 _“Then who's going to get you shaved ice?!”_  

“No one, Bokuto-san.”

 _“Well, I'm going to meet you and then you'll have your chance! Promise!”_  

Akaashi flops himself down on the pillow below and feels the corner of his eyes sting from fatigue. “Don't go through the the trouble,” he insists, already half asleep again. “We can get shaved ice soon.” 

He lets a yawn through by accident, drifting, and Bokuto goes quiet on the other line. 

 _“Hey, Akaashi?”_  

Akaashi smiles. “Yes, Bokuto-san?”

_“You're about to fall asleep, aren't you?”_

“No,” he lies in turn. “You're just hearing the static between us.” 

 _“You should sleep if you have to!”_  

“It's okay,” Akaashi tells him. “You're still out, aren't you? Because you can't calm down?"

 _“But I am calm!”_  

“Hm? No need to lie to me, Bokuto-san.”

_“But I'm not!”_

It goes back and forth like this, _you are, am not, you are, am not,_ and Bokuto just ends up laughing on the other side. He screams out in the barest semblance of words, something primal, something that you'd only hear at a time like 3:45 in the morning, _“You win! Just another round on the riverbank and I'll be fine!”_ and the _click_ of a hang up on the other side of the line. At the blip, _the flash,_ Akaashi just scoffs, throws his phone down, and drifts off to sleep, dreamless but warm.

  
  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  


 

 

In the morning, much too early for anyone to steal the waves from him, Akaashi sticks his tripod into the sand, adjusts the lens of a 35mm film camera, and takes the perfect shot of a horizon post-sunrise. At low tide, safe, Akaashi lets his toes mash in wet sand, small summer heat on his back; it's a pleasant escape from the mugginess of the metropolis, and enough to let him breathe from the onslaught of _personal_ _projects_ and _bit roles_ and _seven-hour editing sprees. I should come here more often,_ he even thinks, before remembering that such places should only be resigned to when you really need them, and settles down to take a few more test shots. 

 _Click. That sound_ comes, like a smack _._ Akaashi thinks about it again. _Click._ A kiss in the club room. _Click._ He thinks about how they _never_ talk about the kiss in the club room.

_Click._

Peering out at the water from his camera lens, Akaashi hears something vibrate in his pocket. It's a voicemail, the phantom sort, and he goes to answer it.

On the other end, a boy runs in the night, out of breath. Ahead of Akaashi, ripples form the water’s surface.

_“You know, you might be asleep by now, and that's okay, because I really did think you were lying to me when you said you didn't want to go to bed, but, well, it's okay.”_

Akaashi laughs. He rests his chin on top of his camera, wrestling an old team jacket around himself. At this point, it feels like a second skin, never devoid of that faded lemon scent.

_“You asked if I was running to calm down, and I guess that was true, I mean, at first it was—but, I've found that something works a lot better than that. It's kinda weird, and if I do weird you out, feel free to never bring it up again, and you know, it's something I can't even really put into words still, but I’m glad you called instead of texted, because, I mean—”_

“Akaashi!”

Akaashi turns around, phone still in his ear, when he says it. 

_“—It's you, I think. I think you’re the one who calms me down.”_

“Hey, Akaashi!” 

Bokuto runs down the other end of the shoreline.

He's got two shaved ices in his hands (because he would be the type to have _shaved ice_ at seven in the morning), and Akaashi just waves to make sure he isn't dreaming. Caught in a mad dash, Bokuto meets him in no time, a mess with sand on his face (because he would be the type to get sand on his face out of _nowhere),_ and kicks up a cloud of it, a storm, all in a dead stop. 

“Sorry, Akaashi!” Bokuto shouts. “I just got too excited you know, and I can't have the ice melting on me!” He shoves one of the shaved ices into Akaashi’s face like its a trophy for _first place_ , and he has no choice but to take it.

“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi starts, taking it into his hands. “I mean— _your interview_. What about that?”

“Oh, well,” says Bokuto, “so I was running last night, after we stopped talking and all, I—well, I called up the interviewer—”

“At _four in the morning?_ ” Akaashi raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah, so, it turns out the reporter was up late anyway, because she was trying to hit a deadline or something, and I convinced her to interview me then! Great, right?”

“Ah, I mean,” Akaashi answers, hiding his face behind the shaved ice, still resilient against the formidable melt. “Just to bring me this?” he asks. Eyes loom up, daring to stay, and it stings in all its presumptions.

But Bokuto grins, never averting, and brims, full with the new day. “I promised you, didn't I? Or were you too sleepy to remember it?” he asks.

“I was not,” Akaashi answers, petulant for once.

“ _Were too._ ”

“Fine,” Akaashi concedes, rolling his eyes, and Bokuto lights up at the victory of it; but the thing is, _Akaashi does remember,_ because promises come rarely in such expansive places, such wild times in that place after _adolescence_ and _actual_ adulthood (or, _pseudo-adulthood_ , as Akaashi would like to call it), and it'd be foolish to throw them away.

Akaashi just didn't expect Bokuto to keep it in the first place. He nibbles into his shaved ice, somehow shy, _somehow not,_ and delights in the artificial cherry tastes. 

“So,” Bokuto looks out to the sea. “Are you going to set up camp here all day? Have you already got the shots you need?”

“Ah, well, you don't need to stay, Bokuto-san—”

“But I’d like to!” he exclaims. “I've already made the trip out here, haven't I? Would you really send me away?”

With a sigh, the exhale of it caught under the rush of waves, Akaashi lets himself stare on before looking back to his camera.

“Fine.” _Just this once._ He takes another bite of his cherry ice before giving up a small nod, waves Bokuto off, and feels that familiar static rise the back of his neck. 

_Just this once._

  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  


 

 

Without a word, Bokuto wades into the tide, chest heaving from a breath never to be caught. A breeze taunts the white tee up his back and he's rolled his track pants up in small scrunches to welcome the water. Bokuto even laughs with the gulls, free hand reaching towards the stratosphere, because he's always been in good graces with everyone _and everything_ — devoid of all pretense, he reigns as clear as an open sky, and takes on the world like he’s known it for many, many years.

 _Would you rather be loved or feared,_ a breeze asks in passing judgement, and Bokuto just beams right back, the answer an obvious one.

At this, Akaashi wonders if this will make a good picture. 

He leans over, right back into his camera, and takes certain aim before pushing down. 

_Click._

  


 

* * *

 

  
  


Akaashi is nineteen, feet in the water, when he realizes _loving_ is not about being loved back.

Instead, he keeps it like a still photo at the back of his head, a favorite scene and forever vibrant.

He knows he cannot force the tides.

  
  


 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  
  


Akaashi tells himself that he's prepared for this day.

“Akaashi, I think I might be in love.”

It's autumn in the city, all hues of vermillion and ash scents, when the two of them make their way to the observation deck of Tokyo Tower, alone amongst the tourists and passing couples of the season. Akaashi stares down below, too caught in the comfort of a breeze to break himself free from its fixation. 

Smiles comes lithely, flexible in practice, but small. A little bit of a lie. “I see,” he says anyway and then comes the question—“ _Who is it?_ ”—but Bokuto doesn’t answer. Nonetheless, Akaashi goes over the possibilities and lets his imagination run wild.

 **A)** Bokuto Koutarou, _Olympic star to be_ , walks hand and hand with an aspiring model he met during one of his training camps abroad. She has three endorsement deals and five more on the way, and she's been linked with other volleyball stars like Miyagi’s _Oikawa Tooru_ ; but she’s since called Bokuto _just right_ , because he is all substance without the vanity. _A little fussy,_ she says, _but nothing I can't handle. I like that he’s honest._

Or **B)** , Bokuto Koutarou, former Fukurodani VBC captain, sparks a new union with the ex-catcher from the baseball team after various batting cage sessions. They even have the nerve to call each other _high school sweethearts,_ and Bokuto wonders why he's never noticed him before. The two of them are now currently thinking about buying a property on Isshiki Beach.

Or **C)** , Bokuto Koutarou, a boy who's been in love this entire time, finds a mysterious first flame from memories past. It's serendipitous, their union, and they end up where they started; Bokuto’s too starry-eyed to say, _“it's you, it's really you,”_ but they both know at that exact moment, because it's always been there, and it is nothing but natural after that. 

Akaashi finds a strange fondness in that last option, one formed out of an undeniable ache, _years old_ , and only hopes he’ll find what he’s looking for.

“I’m sure it’ll work out,” Akaashi even tells him, and Bokuto shrinks like he notices the smallness in his voice.

  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  


“Say, Akaashi.”

“Yeah?”

“What's that word you used back in the club room? I mean, you might not remember—but you use it when you think someone loves you back, but you're not so sure, so you just end up telling yourself they don't.” 

Akaashi cannot help but laugh. It is soundless in its effort. “I don't think there's a real word for that, Bokuto-san,” he tells him, and Bokuto wilts over his piece of chocolate cake. It's a full-fledged winter by now, a day too cold for anything else but _kotatsu_ endeavors and old movies on TV, but Akaashi had decided that might’ve been _the single best way_ to spend his birthday, anyway. With the rest of the Fukurodani crew coming by later with Suntory malts and _even more cake_ , and Ennoshita away at Miyagi for the weekend, Akaashi and Bokuto have relegated themselves to a showing of _Citizen Kane_ while waiting _,_ drowsy and at peace.

(Or, well, _mostly_ at peace.)

“I mean, something close to it,” Bokuto continues on. “I know you've said it before, Akaashi.”

Akaashi thinks. Maybe he has. _Maybe he already knows_. Maybe it's just a matter of not wanting to say it.

“Well. 

“ _Well_?” Bokuto repeats back in asking. 

“I guess if there had to be a word for it…”

Bokuto leans forward.

“It'd be called something unre—”

_“Akaaaaashi!”_

Akaashi doesn't get a chance to finish when he hears the start of a sung _HAPPY BIRTHDAY_ bellowed outside his door. He recognizes Komi’s falsetto, and Washio’s terrible off-key tenor, and everyone else’s contributions to the choir, and just resigns himself to an incomplete sentiment _._

“Oh, they're here!”

Bokuto doesn’t seem to mind though, grins wide and eyes all lit up. It lingers on the surface, but there's something subdued about Bokuto today, eyes lower than usual, shoulders slumped by the merest millimeters; but he looks back to Akaashi anyway, breath held in anticipation, and motions towards the table. Through it all, he huffs in something awfully proud, swelling up, and lets Akaashi see for himself.

A present, boxed in wrinkled wrapping, sits on the kotatsu.

“Happy birthday, Akaashi,” he says, a secret for once, before all peace is broken for the night.

  
  


 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  


Akaashi finds a Polaroid camera and packs of blank film later in that box that night, when everyone is full off too much cake and domestic beer and infinite rounds of various card games. It's a mighty effort getting up again, to keep from dozing off under kotatsus and on the floor, but mostly everyone finds the resilience, _the determination,_ and Akaashi remembers the force that is the _Fukurodani Volleyball Club;_ the only one who _doesn't_ get up is Bokuto, because he's the one who put this whole **_HOOT HOOT HAPPY BIRTHDAY EXTRAVAGANZA_** together, and it would be right for him to rest up in the meanwhile. 

“Hey, Akaashi! We’re gonna get going now!” Komi calls from the door, struggling with his scarf. He's still got chocolate cake on his face, but Akaashi thinks it suits him, somehow.

With jackets on and shoes tied, everyone sees Akaashi off at the door, some too antsy to stay inside for too long, and he just waves them off until next time. Konoha lingers, smirks wide across his face, and wrangles an arm around Akaashi’s neck. “So,” he starts, extra sly. _Too sly._ “When did you and Bokuto _finally_ become an item?” 

Akaashi turns a head towards him, before finding the effort to throw him off. “ _What_?” he asks. “Where would you get that idea, Konoha-san?” 

Konoha sighs, mostly in mocking. “Well, I mean, _sure_ we've got these hangouts, and they're not _half bad_ , but the rest of the team has decided that the most time our dear captain spends _is with you_.” He presses an index finger into Akaashi’s chest before closing it into a fist, heart-shaped. “People are going to start talking if all he does is dote on you.”

Akaashi shakes his head. “It's not like that. We're just—”

“ _Friends, friends, friends._ I know,” Konoha singsongs, maybe just a little too tipsy from the Suntory and cheap sake _,_ and wanders down the hall in wide strides.  

“Konoha-san, please be careful.” Akaashi goes to help him.

“You know, no one knew I think, or least, all they did was like, _joke about it_ —” Konoha hiccups. “But I knew. I knew that day he came barging in to hide from his fan girls. I knew you were _head over heels_ for him. That _greeeeat_ Bokuto Koutarou! It was the day I realized, _wow, I'm no match for him!_ ” He laughs, pinching the air between two fingers. “I had the smallest crush on you, you know.”

Akaashi scoffs out something silent. “You’re _drunk,_ Konoha-san.” 

“Yeah, yeah, but that doesn't mean I'm _not_ telling the truth,” Konoha points another finger, elevator opening behind him. He stumbles in, suave as ever, and Akaashi follows after. “ _Listen,_ though,” he says. “Even if you guys aren't together _right now, I swear_ it's gonna happen any day.”

“I doubt that, Konoha-san,” says Akaashi, with eyes on the ticker above the door. Three more floors to go." 

“Oh, _believe in yourself more_.”

“There’s really no need for wild speculation,” Akaashi refutes, just to fill the silence, because he swears this is the longest elevator ride he's had in his life and he’d rather be done with it. They hit the lobby after what feels like a thousand years, and Konoha still does not step out. 

“Well, it's not.”

Akaashi is not inclined to believe drunk words. He stays to listen, anyway. “And how do you know that?” he asks, almost a whisper, almost lost altogether, and he knows he's lost on the great front of _not appearing to care_. 

“Can't you see it, Akaashi?” Konoha asks, equal in hushed tones, and the elevator door shuts closed ahead of them without going anywhere.

“No.”

Konoha presses the _open_ button again, following with the number for Akaashi’s floor. When he steps back out into the lobby to join the others, he raises an eyebrow, holds up the ever-indomitable _peace sign,_ and bids Akaashi adieu with one more observation:

“Bokuto only stays still enough to be with _you_ , Akaashi.”

A refusal clogs up in Akaashi’s throat. He ends up saying nothing at all.

Through the crack in an elevator door that never quite closes, Konoha finishes a hazy thought.

“It’s always, _always_ you.”

  
  
  
  


 

* * *

 

  


 

 

 _“So, did you have a good birthday, Keiji?”_ his mother asks over the phone the next day.

“Oh, it was fine.”

 _“Just fine? Did you do anything fun?”_  

“We had cake and watched some movies. I tasted beer for the first time, but I didn’t really enjoy it.”

His mother laughs over the line. _“Aw, well, sometimes it’s an acquired taste_ — _but I’m glad you had people to celebrate with. I’m sorry I couldn’t be in the city to celebrate with you this year.”_

“It’s all right,” Akaashi tells her, about to fall asleep on his futon, apartment empty for the rest of the night. “Things happen. At least uncle’s fall wasn’t too bad.” 

_“Well, I should be getting back to him now, anyway. Oh, and be sure to thank the party planner for me. It’s not everyday I get to hear the extra pep in my son’s voice.”_

“Pep?” asks Akaashi. “What makes you think there’s extra _pep_?”

 _“Oh, Keiji.”_ A sigh comes over the line. _“A mother always knows. Why do you think I packed that jacket for you in the first place?_ ” 

“Good night, okaa-san,” Akaashi teases. She just giggles again.

_“Good night, Keiji.”_

Off the phone, Akaashi turns over to greet the Polaroid camera on the opposite pillow. A single photo, _the first photo in the pack,_ rests under it, and he takes the time to study the picture under the gauzy filter. Bokuto’s got his arm around Akaashi, smiles wide in the notorious _front facing shot_ , and a certain setter can only stay close to keep in the frame. _Too close,_ he thinks, even now, but he doesn’t refute it. Because he didn’t then, and he wouldn’t now. 

At this, memories imprinted, Akaashi closes his eyes, keeping the photo pinched between his fingers.

“Thank you,” he says, before drifting asleep, and Akaashi dreams of school gym roofs, bare feet, and the most fortunate kind of rain.

  
  


* * *

 

  
  
  


_“Let's begin, Bokuto-san.”_

  
  
  


 

* * *

 

  


It is raining on the day of the Laputa wedding, but Akaashi hopes it'll clear up by the reception. With thirty minutes to go until the party, he allows himself the time to stop at the Fukurodani gym first, fully suited, camera in tow, and ready to finish another class assignment—because _special_ was the word the instructor used to find the subject for their next scene, and Akaashi had known exactly where to look. 

The rain falls lighter across the city. Shoes don't come off this time in the pilgrimage. He can still hear the sound of shoes squeaking, of bastard straight spikes hitting the ground below, and dull cheer of making it through to the other side. _What a good and honest sound it is_ , he thinks _. Still_ thinks.

_Infinitely special._

Akaashi opens his eyes. From the weeds growing in the cracks in the pavement, to the chipped paint of the foundation, he knows he’ll get questions—like _why this, why a high school gym in a city full of landmarks and natural wonders and the seas at every coast_ —and remembers that some phenomena will never find the right words.

He rests his chin atop the camera and his tripod. Steady as can be, Akaashi finds the right shot, double doors right in the center, and thinks about the irrepressible motion behind those doors. A _screenplay_ , if he ever had to write it down. 

A first year setter falls for his ace. _Click._ Maybe, this time, he will will fall for him back. _Click_. They watch movies like _Seven Samurai_ together, and kiss whenever they want in their favorite theaters. _Click_. It's not always a happy affair, and sometimes they'll lose their patience with each other. _Click._ But in the end, they'll always find a way _to be_ —because maybe it's just a matter of taking their time together. 

 _Click_.

“Akaashi!” 

The rain picks up behind him, a proper storm if anyone’s ever seen it, and Akaashi turns around. Bokuto Koutarou stands in the rain without an umbrella, _a wet mess_ , shoes in his hook of his hands, and Akaashi blinks a few times in case he might be dreaming.

“Bokuto-san?” he even mouths without really making a sound, but the other stumbles forward like he might've heard him, anyway. Bokuto smiles, weary like it might break at any second, but he holds it with the utmost bravery. 

“Akaashi, I…”

Bokuto doesn’t finish, and the next few seconds play out like another thousand years. Bokuto calms himself from a bout of rapid breathing, hands cupped over his knees in an effort to keep still, and mats down the fringe still in his face. Meters apart become mere centimeters, and before Akaashi knows it, the only space remaining between them is the width of a 35mm film strip. 

(Bokuto looks like he might die from the closeness. Akaashi thinks he might, too.)

“I…” Bokuto tries starting again. “I know there are things we don’t talk about.”

“I know,” Akaashi answers. 

“And it’s…” Bokuto bites his tongue again. “And it’s not because I _don’t_ want to talk about it. It’s just, I never know _how._ Because you know how I am, just _no good—_ ”

“No good with your words,” Akaashi finishes for him, and he mashes his mouth closed to let Bokuto finish.

“Yeah! Like, _really bad,”_ says Bokuto.. “But, well, the truth is... _well,_ how do I say this? I mean, I guess it started off like, this weird feeling in my chest—like every time I saw you, it’d get all gurgly and _it wouldn’t work right_ and I thought I’d have to go to the emergency room, you know?” 

Akaashi laughs. Bokuto straightens his spine. They both don’t dare to move.

“And then. And then _you kissed me_.” Akaashi takes a deep breath as Bokuto says this. “You kissed me, and it all turned into this weird thing where we didn’t talk about the fact that _you kissed me,_ but it was killing me, I think, because since that day, I—” Another deep breath. _Exhale, Bokuto-san_. “—I just haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. And I was afraid that, even if you _did_ like me at some point, you wouldn’t _now_ , because this city is big, all these changes are _big,_ and feeling this way can make a guy feel _awfully small._ ”

“Bokuto-san—”

“Please, just hear me out, Akaashi. It’s taken me a really long time to put the words together, and you can reject me all you want when I’m finished, but—” 

“Bokuto-san!”

Silence reigns for only a beat when Bokuto realizes, _finally sees_ —

“ _Akaashi_.”

—how a co-captain, _his co-captain,_ brushes their hands together, small in grip but sure all the same, and initiates their second kiss, a sequel in the making.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  


From the raised step of the gym where they first met, Akaashi leans over, slow and steady, and waits to wake up from some useless dream; but even by the press of their lips, and the slow drawl of a separation right after, the insistences that they both have places to be later, he doesn’t.

“I...still wanted to put it into words, but it’s so hard to say.”

Akaashi waits for a moment, as selfish as he’ll ever allow of himself, and perches his hands atop Bokuto’s shoulders. He comes close, smile weaved across his face, and whispers the following into his captain’s ear: 

“You love me, don’t you?”

 

(At this, Bokuto nearly falls back, _faint_ , and Akaashi can only go to catch him.)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


* * *

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

“Keiji-kun! You made it right on time! And you look so—” 

“Please don’t say it, onee-san.” 

“— _Happy_! Did something happen?” the bride asks, taking both of Akaashi’s hands into the reception. It’s a full-blown party by now in the Laputa theater, with a sea of people he’s never seen before, but he can’t help but be pulled by its tide. He pretends to listen, head full of _getting back to Bokuto,_ when she goes on about how she’s _done a terribly presumptuous thing,_ because she really believed that she’d found the perfect match for Akaashi, and that it’d be an injustice if they didn’t at least _meet._  

“Oh, you know, I don’t even really know him all too well, but he’s so friendly it makes you feel like you’ve known him for a million years! He’s one of _those_ kinds of guys, you know?” 

 _Sounds familiar._ Akaashi smiles. “Okay,” he says. 

“He once came into the Laputa when he was younger, like high school? He was so upset about something! I never actually understood what...but when he came out of that showing of _Seven Samurai,_ he was... _beaming._ Just completely different.” 

They make it up the winding stairs, past the other partygoers and _well-wishers._  

“And he came right up to the ticket booth, super insistent. _Who was that kid who came in here before?_ _He really helped me out of my funk! Could I have his name?_ And Well, I told him _no,_ because that’s an invasion of privacy, and that he’d have to wait until I knew he grew up to a decent man. _A good man._ So he took my challenge. And he grew up well. That’s when I said he could meet you.” 

Akaashi stops outside the entrance to the main theater, and the bride draws back with a smile. 

“He said he was already in love with someone else when he got here, but you could always steal him away, right?” 

Outside, a rain finally stops, and a movie, _a new favorite,_ begins to play on the other side of the door. 

“Sure.”

  
  


When Akaashi pops into the back of the theater, a previous movie rolling it's credits, he scans the empty rows until he finds him, sitting right in the middle.

 

“Bokuto-san.”

 

 _Seven Samurai_ begins as usual, and Bokuto Koutarou looks over his shoulder, wide-eyed before realizing.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i'm at [@iwakages](https://twitter.com/iwakages) or [tumblr](http://companions.tumblr.com)!


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